Send My Love to Charon and the Styx
by ofalexandra
Summary: Their world is dust and fire, and the ground beneath them crumbles. Sometimes, you need to look back to move forward. 10/Rose. Completely AU. CURRENTLY BEING EDITED.
1. Ground Zero

**A/N: **Major blanket influences and references for the entire story include Jean-Paul Sartre, Orwell's _1984_, Huxley's _Brave New World_, assorted Greek mythology, Margaret Atwood's _The Handmaid's Tale_, scenes from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Shakespeare's _Othello_ and _King Lear_, Haruki Murakami (_Kafka on the Shore_ in particular), Inception, F. Scott Fitzgerald's _The Great Gatsby_, John Fowles's _The French Lieutenant's Woman_, and T.S. Eliot (namely _The Waste Land_ and _The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock_).

**Beta'd by the lovely and all-powerful gloryjean on LJ.** Brit-picked too since, well, I am a Brit.

* * *

><p><strong>1. GROUND ZERO<strong>

_**Then**_

First-class compartments in trains are not luxuries she is used to.

The economy has fractured, and people do what they can to survive. Years of tyrannical rule have drained them all, and the world is a tired place.

Her best coat is frayed at the edges, and the vinyl of her heels are slightly marked. It is not ideal, but it is the best she can do. It is the best they all can do. The clock on the wall to her right reads five minutes to thirteen, and she tries not to fidget.

The compartment door on the end of her carriage bangs open, and her heart leaps to her throat. A tall figure in a pinstriped suit and long overcoat strolls in, and she relaxes a little. It is not the man she is waiting for. She is startled when he drops onto the leather seat opposite her, and she briefly wonders if her contractor had sent someone in his stead. She looks at this man facing her, long and lanky and brown-haired and _no,_ she thinks, _no, this man is good._ He catches her gaze, and she drops it guiltily, almost ashamed. _(__h__er hands are streaked with blood, even if they look clean. she must not stain a good person.)_

The clock reads two minutes to thirteen, and she wonders what will happen when her contractor finds another man in his seat. She wants to tell this man to go, to tell him to run as fast as he possibly can. _(__s__he really wants to ask him to take her along.)_ She doesn't know how to give voice to her words. He is watching her, she knows, her senses honed by years of escaping. He leans forward, and rests his arms on his legs.

_Those who give the orders are not the ones who die,_ he tells her, and she is mystified, but she holds his words close to her heart like truths and redemption.

_For luck,_ he says with a secret smile, and he hands her a key. She takes it, and stares at the key in her palm, warm from his touch. If she looks at it closely, she can almost swear the key is glowing.

When she looks back up, he is gone.

The compartment door is ajar.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Now<strong>_

Her contractor saunters in, all tailored-clothes and slick and polish. He reeks of wealth and opulence that makes a sad mockery of the world they live in.

He doesn't sit. Instead, he stands and stares out the window. Wasted fields and grey concrete monoliths rush past.

Rush. They are always rushing.

She doesn't know his name, doesn't know who he is. It is not her job to know. He has told her to call him _the Master,_ and the words are vile on her tongue. She takes his messages, and runs them across cities and countries and empires. She takes his poisonous words, and spreads them across lands and seas. She is not a killer, but she is a murderer by proxy.

He hands her an envelope, and bile rises at the back of her throat. _(__o__h, Charon, she thinks, how many would you have me deliver to you today?)_ She takes it, and opens the envelope. It is her job, after all.

The single sheet of paper reads: _Sixteen o'clock. The Rubicon. All along the Watchtower._

She doesn't know what it means. She doesn't have to. She takes his messages, and delivers them across nations, to people like him and unlike him, all powerful and insidious and villainous. They trust nothing and no one, and so they contract those like her to be the footmen of their words.

_Technology makes a bad slave, _he once told her. _A thousand quid to the right person will buy you the name of everyone who's ever lived, died, and will live and die._ His words had been _(are)_ viscous and dripping, and she shudders to recall them. _You can't punish technology, _he had continued. _But people, _and he had paused, as if savouring the phrase, like candy and sweet blood on his tongue. _People you can kill._

She is his runner, his watcher-on-the-ground, and he is the Master.

She hands the envelope back to him, and he burns it with an engraved, ornate lighter. The ashes are white, and she finds herself thinking that they look like crushed bones.

"Harold Saxon. Canary Wharf. Get it to him." He speaks in clipped, measured tones, and she nods. She can do nothing else.

He makes to leave, and she can feel her sigh of relief on the tip of her breath. He stops, and turns towards her.

"Where did you get that?" he asks, and the key sits heavy and warm on the chain she had slipped it onto around her neck. His expression is shuttered, vaguely curious.

_Lost – it was lost,_ she tells him, and it is not entirely a lie.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Later<strong>_

Her message has been delivered, and now she has to run.

_Technology makes a bad slave,_ but people you can kill and torture, and many want her for what she delivers. The city is crowded at this time of the day, and she weaves in and out of the masses in turns and crosses and backtracks. She knows she is being followed, but she doesn't know by _how many_ or _who_ or _where_. She just has to run.

_Hello_, comes a voice next to her, and she freezes for an instant before her body screams at her to _get out of there._ A hand settles on her shoulder, and she realizes it is the stranger from the train. She doesn't know why she does, but she stops and ends up walking next to him.

"You're being followed, you know." He says it like it is an everyday occurrence, like they are discussing the weather, like it is not her life on the line, like there is no sniper rifle trained on her head. "There's one of the roof, over there," he says, vaguely gesturing to an abandoned apartment block to their left. "Another's twenty feet behind, and he's waiting for you to turn that corner," he points to the tiny street she had been planning to slip down, "before he shoots you. He's carrying a Glock, I think." He raises a finger to his chin, in almost-serious contemplation. "No, maybe a Beretta. Or was it a Colt? Ah, no matter. It had a really pretty rosewood grip, though."

He looks at her, and she finds herself unable to hold his gaze.

"The last one's nearer than the other two, and he thinks you're very foolish." Her breath catches. He shifts, and his long overcoat opens a little, enough to reveal the outline of a gun. "That, and he has a Glock. A Glock 17, mind you, and I know this one for sure."

She can't run. The minute she turns, he will shoot her in the back, and if she runs, she will be gunned down by the others. How could she have been so _blind?_ Goodwill and compassion are traits that died with the economy, and she really should have known this. The best thing she can do is to keep him talking.

"Oh, the classic keep-him-talking-so-I-can-think-my-way-out-of-this tactic! I must say, I'm impressed. My contractor told me you were blond and rather dim." She opens her mouth, wanting to ask him who this contractor of his is. He notices, and makes a shushing noise.

"No, no, you know I can't tell you! That would be too telling now, wouldn't it? Removes the suspense and all that." Her mind is moving in a thousand directions all at once, and her legs are screaming at her to bolt.

"Now, see here, there's a little café up this street, with the best banana cream pie in London. We'll go there, and you will buy one. Sit in the right corner booth, and make sure your back is to the door." She is bewildered by his request, and he leads her to _Martha's Patisserie_. He stops her at the entrance for a moment, and his eyes are hard. "I wouldn't run, if I were you. It'd just make it more of a hassle for me, having to track you down again – not that it would take me long, I assure you – and pick up where we left off. I don't have that kind of time."

They step through the door, and a bell chimes. The café is small and cozy, with lacy curtains at the shop windows and pretty displays of pastries and cakes. She is utterly flabbergasted. Martha, she notes, is a gorgeous African-American woman, with a warm smile and inviting eyes.

"Rose! It's so lovely to see you again! How are you? It's been what, three years since we last met?" Martha is beaming, and Rose is disconcerted. She makes to reply, but he cuts her off before she can. She _knows_ has never been here before.

"Right! So, Martha, take care of Rose for me for a bit, yeah? I've just got to nip out to settle some scores, but I'll be back in a jiffy." Martha nods. Rose can't accept this, can't accept sitting here and waiting for _something._ Their world is moving, and there are lives on the line, and –

"Where are you going?" she asks. There is a slight pause in the middle of his step, and he cocks his head to the side.

"To do my job." He disappears outside with the sound of bells tinkling.

Rose stands at the display counter awkwardly for several long moments, before she remembers what he told her. She slides into the booth at the back of the café, and keeps her back to the entrance. She cannot make sense of the situation.

Martha appears by her side minutes later, and hands her a plate with a delicious-looking banana cream pie. "Your usual, on the house," she says with a wink, and disappears back into the kitchen.

The vinyl of the seat is worn and faded, and the pictures on the wall are homely and comforting. She wonders at the feeling. She traces the splitting seams on the seat beneath her, and tries to press them back together.

She is not surprised when she fails.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Before<strong>_

He sits opposite her in the tiny booth, and she is hit with a sense of not-quite-déjà vu. _(__h__er thoughts drift to trains and life and keys.)_

Her banana cream pie sits untouched, and she catches him eyeing it avariciously. She pushes the plate towards him, and he takes it gratefully. She watches him while he eats, in large mouthfuls and quick movements that she is sure should really look inelegant but doesn't. He is all lines and planes and utilitarian angles, and she thinks he could almost be called handsome, if not for the sadness and solemnity in his eyes.

She sits, back straight and hands folded in her lap, and waits for him to finish. _(__s__he needs to know why she is here, and all she has ever wanted was to understand.)_

When the plate is empty, he places his fork down _(quickly and haphazardly, she notes, and she wonders if that says something about him)_, and stares at her with serious eyes. He reaches inside his overcoat, and pulls out his pistol. He handles the gun like an old lover – gently and respectfully, and she knows he has used this gun many times before.

He strips the gun in economical movements, movements that she knows come with years of practice and use, and she swallows hard. He removes the magazine, and places it next to the gun frame before separating the slide and barrel. The gun is spread out before him, useless in its dissection, and words fail her.

"What are you doing?" she asks after a long moment, perplexed and too tired for games.

He leans back in the booth, tucking a hand into the pockets of his slacks. "Getting you to trust me," he replies, and she is stumped. She tries, though, tries to form sentences and string words together, but her mind is whirling and spinning, and coherence eludes her. A sudden thought strikes her, and she is compelled to lean forward across the table, towards him.

"You killed them." She is certain, but she needs to hear the words from him.

He nods. "Yes, I did."

She mulls over his reply. "That was your job?" He glances away, and that is all the affirmation she needs. He nods slowly, moments later. He traces patterns on the table between the two of them, and she wonders what pictures he sees.

"Does that bother you?" he asks.

"I – " Killing is wrong, she knows, and deaths are sad, sad things, but how can she, proxy-murderer and complicit-executioner, be the judge? She is confident when she responds, and she thinks he knows it too. "No. No, it doesn't." Suddenly, she is unsure, caught up in her guilt and the amoral nature of their world.

"Should it?" she asks, and hopes for absolution in his answer.

"I don't know." It doesn't come. There is quiet between them for several prolonged minutes, and the sound of silence is as loud as any other.

"Their deaths were quick," he supplies helpfully, and she wonders what any onlooker would think; a man and a woman in a pretty deli talking about death and killing.

"Ah," she replies, and does not deign to add more.

There are no windows for her to peer out of, and no people around them for her to observe but him, so she studies him carefully. "Why?"

He frowns, unsure of her question. "Why what?"

"Why did you kill them?" His intake of breath is a little too sharp, and his movements jerk for a split-second before they resume their prior languidness. She would have missed all these, had she not been watching him as intensely as she had. He attempts to brush her question aside, and responds with a jaunty smile that she is sure is more broken than he lets on.

"I told you, it's my job." She shakes her head, refusing to believe this as the entire truth. He runs a tired hand through his mussed hair. "It's a principle thing, you know? You're a Watcher – " He looks to her, as if for confirmation. When none comes, he nods assuredly, and she knows he has dossier on her. "– and I've always thought, who watches the Watchers?" He gestures vaguely to himself. "So yeah, here I am. Story of my life, really."

Something in his words makes her think that _no_, this cannot be the story, not unless the book has dozens of torn-out pages and missing chapters, and she turns to stare at the colourful pastries and cakes that adorn the display case at the counter. There is a cake, she notes, in the shape of a key.

"No," she tells him. "No. There's more. You aren't telling me something; something vital." She turns back to look at him.

There is an internal battle waging within him, and she hopes that it will end in her favour. He does nothing for a long moment, before reaching into his pocket and pulling out a scrap of paper. He slides it across the table towards her.

"This is yours," he says, and she wants to believe that he is lying. The message on the scrap is laughably short: _Run. _It is three letters and a dot, but she knows it is hers, knows the loops of the R and curves of the U like she knows the back of her hand. She runs a finger over the word, and feels the indentation her pen somewhere had made somewhen.

She is quiet, and she traces the word over and over again, like it will suddenly reveal a deeper hidden message for her. At length, she stops.

"I don't understand," she says, and her voice is tremulous and shaky, and she hopes he will not notice it. He does, and he watches her closely as he reassembles his gun.

"I know," he sighs, and she wonders why he sounds so sad.

He stands abruptly, and extends a hand to her. "Come on."

She takes it, and they slip away into the jungle of the city.

_Run._ The word lingers at the back of her mind.

* * *

><p><em><strong>After<strong>_

"He's dead," she asks. He nods, and she turns her head away from the prone body lying on the ground before them. "I'm sorry," she continues, and he shakes his head.

"Don't be." She tries not to, but it is not something that she can help.

"We should go," he tells her, and his voice is sturdy and firm. She grasps his words like a lifeline, and takes his hand as they leave.

The Master's corpse is an image seared into her mind, and she cannot stop shaking. The Doctor tugs her to his side, and loops an arm around her shoulder. They walk for miles, never stopping or pausing, and they look like any other couple on the street. She wishes they were. They end up along the Thames, and she stares out at the sedate waters of the iconic river.

"Doctor, wait," she calls out, and grips the railing next to her. He tilts her face up to his, a question in his eyes and expression worried. "No," she murmurs, and she turns her face away from his. The Thames flows past, and she wonders how it can be so calm when their world is collapsing before them. "No. I just –" She stops, and finds her words inadequate.

His hand is still around her, and she buries her face against his solid warmth for a moment. "I wonder," she begins again, and her voice is surer this time. "I wonder, how many wars are fought between good friends?" He stiffens slightly against her, and she draws him closer, hugging him.

"I don't know what the moral is," she says, and he will pretend the dampness on his shirt is not from tears, and she will pretend that he is fine. Her words are muffled against his chest.

His hand is in her hair, and he presses a kiss to the side of her head.

"There isn't one," he tells her. It is poor comfort, but it is the truth.

Sometimes, she learns, the truth has to be enough.


	2. Aftermath

**A/N:** Once again, beta'd by the amazing **glory_jean**.

* * *

><p><strong>2. AFTERMATH<strong>

_When: Post-Ground Zero_

He bundles her into layers of coats and scarves, and they board a train in Moscow.

This train is older, creakier, and travel-wearier than the opulence of their first. It is comforting.

The bleak countryside flies by them outside the yellowing windows, and it is reassuring. He hasn't told her where they are going, not exactly. _The Trans-Siberian_ _Railway_, the little pamphlet they had gotten with their tickets reads, and she turns it over to find a tiny map detailing all the train routes at the back. She closes her eyes, tracing a finger along a line, finding it hovering over Beijing when she opens them. She can feel his gaze on her.

He is sitting next to her this time, his presence solid and warm in the hostile Russian winter. There is stubble on his jaw, and it makes him look older, far older, even if she doesn't know his age. They have been running for nine days now, a constant pattern of looking-over-shoulders and ducking-into-alleyways. It is something they are both used to. They don't know life any other way, and she wonders if she even wants life any other way. She doesn't think so, and she doesn't think he would either. They were born for life on the run.

They have reached a wary truce, both of them. They will smile and speak and hug, and they will talk of nothing that matters. Nights spent on the run are long and hard, and neither of them get much sleep. She feels him watching her sometimes, when he thinks she's asleep and when he's sure she doesn't notice. She doesn't like sleep; it leaves her open and vulnerable to the nightmares of her subconscious. It is not a rare night that finds her bolting up in bed, stifling a scream.

The train rocks beneath them, and when she places her feet flat on the carriage floor she can feel the vibrations of the engines and the tracks. She likes this feeling, because it makes her feel like they are headed somewhere, somewhere new and exciting and beautiful. The rocking makes her drowsy.

She tries to fight it, she really does, but her eyes droop close against her efforts, and she finds herself leaning against him more and more. She hopes he won't mind. He shifts against her, and for a moment she thinks he means to shift away, but he settles again, and she finds her head at a more comfortable angle on his shoulder. There is an uncomfortable object digging into her ribs where she has leaned against him, and she squirms a little in the languor of her sleep, drowsily annoyed. She feels him go still for a long minute before the object is gone, and she distantly hears the _snick_ and _click_ of a gun.

She is instantly awake, yanking her head off his shoulder to stare at him. His Glock 17 is in his hand, and he gestures almost apologetically before tucking it away in his coat on his other side. He notes her wide eyes, like an animal ready to bolt, and sighs. He takes her hand, tugging her back to his side.

She relaxes against him in small increments, but it is a long time before she slips into sleep. Somewhere between the lines of consciousness and dreams, she thinks she feels him press a kiss to her hair.

Her return to wakefulness is violent and terrified. The bitter taste of her dream lingers on the back of her tongue, and the echoes of death and blood reverberate throughout her mind. Her wrists and arms are burning and in flames and she doesn't know _why_, all she knows is that she is clawing and scratching and needs to _get it off_, but there are hands pinning her down, so she kicks and bucks. She does not scream, though, because if she screams _they will know she is here, and more of them will come._

"Rose, stop! Snap out of it! For God's sake, Rose, just – " There is a body atop hers, rendering her immobile, and for a brief moment she is terrified, but she makes herself _breathe_ and _think,_ and the voice is strong and calming. " – just stop." She does.

When she focuses her eyes and forces herself to _look,_ she is pinned underneath him on the seat, and her arms are above her head. His eyes are deep and searching on hers, and they lie suspended like this for a moment longer before he eases up and off her. The loss of his body heat makes her feel strangely bereft. "Are you – " He starts, and inhales sharply when he focuses on her arms.

"God, Rose." She looks down, and is shocked to find long, thin lines of blood running up the length of both her arms. On closer inspection, her nails are bloody. It is not hard to draw a conclusion. He swallows hard, and she watches his Adam's apple bob once.

"I – " It is suddenly so very hard to breathe, and she has to wait for several moments for her breathing to even out. "I don't know why – I don't –" It is still hard to articulate, and she chokes back fear and confusion. She tries again. "Help me," she implores.

The scratches are long but shallow, and it doesn't take long for him to clean and wrap them in gauze. He will not meet her eyes. They sit in silence after that, as grey fields and smoggy skies trundle pasts. Her arms are still burning.

Their train makes several stops, and she is vaguely aware of the movement and motion of figures outside their compartment door, all boarding and disembarking and carrying on with their lives. She will not admit that she is a little envious of them.

There is a knock on their door just as she stands and stretches, and she sees his hand slip into his coat out of the corner of her eye. She is sure he is gripping his gun. The doors slide open, and the conductor steps in, asking to see their tickets. She notices the Doctor relax slightly, and she turns away to face the window when he fishes their stubs out from the pockets of his slacks.

Her voice has been underused, and she so longs for more human contact just to pretend and feel _normal_. "Dreary day, isn't it?" she asks, making polite conversation.

"Oh, yes, indeed," comes the reply. "Are you and your husband travelling far?" She startles at the term, and lets it slip to avoid confusion. It is a cardinal rule in running and running well: don't stand out too much, or you will die, and she holds these rules to her heart like lifelines, because they mostly are.

"I don't really know," she answers, savouring the small talk and chit-chat. "We're just exploring the place, seeing the sights, you know?" There are mountains in the distance, and she thinks they could be called beautiful if not for the stark grey of their surroundings.

"Oh, so you're tourists then?" She is puzzled, wondering why he hadn't drawn that conclusion from her usage of English. She nods. "What a surprise, your Russian is almost perfect!"

She freezes. She barely registers the conductor wishing them well on their journey and departing.

His eyes are hard on hers.

"I don't – I don't speak Russian," she manages to get out, and sinks onto the seat next to him. Her mind is whirling in a thousand directions, and she has so many questions that remain unanswered. She thinks she fears the answers. His posture is tense and stiff.

"You do," he says at length, and she wonders why he is suddenly so cold and withdrawn. She wonders what he knows that he hasn't told her. _Everything,_ she thinks, and the word is bitter in her mouth.

"Do you remember?" comes next, and the question is at the fore of her mind. _Remember what?_ He sees her clear confusion, and she is sure that the shift of light in his eyes is disappointment.

"No," she murmurs, shaking her head. "No, I don't."

She shifts, turning her body towards him and raising her eyes to his. "Should I?" she asks, because she _needs_ to know.

He takes her hand, running a thumb over her knuckles. "In your own time," he sighs, and it is an answer and not-answer all at once. "In your own time." His breath ghosts over her fingers.

She doesn't know how, but she is sure he is lying.

They end up in Beijing six days later.


	3. Some Radical Notion

**A/N:** Beta'd by the brilliant **glory_jean**.

* * *

><p><strong>3. SOME RADICAL NOTION<strong>

_When: Pre-Ground Zero_

The bed is empty. She doesn't have to look at the cold spot next to her to know this. His absence is tangible and something she can almost taste.

She hates it.

He isn't in the house. She wanders around her tiny, under-heated apartment in nothing but her robe, and tries to ignore the crushing disappointment that settles at the back of her throat. She pulls several eggs out from the fridge, ignoring the fact that those are all the eggs left in her weekly rations, and it is only Wednesday. She deserves this, she thinks. She deserves to indulge herself, because he won't.

There is a burning at the back of her eyes, and she tries to ignore it, she really does. The heels of her hands press hard against her eyes, and she wonders why she allows herself down this road _every single time._ She is a fool, she agrees on most days, except for the days when he comes to her and she thinks it's worth it. That he's worth it. Her nails bite little crescent moons into her palm.

Her eggs fry fast, coming out funny-smelling and slightly unappetizing after their sizzle in the sub-grade cooking oil they are given. She carries the plate to the sofa, and turns on the telly. The house is too quiet, and it suffocates her. They are airing yet another propaganda programme, and the smiling faces of children and too-happy soldiers beam back at her. _Another victory for Britannia!_ The words flash across the screen, and the footage of the Union flag being waved in front of the Eiffel tower comes on. She flicks the telly off.

Her eggs are cold.

She returns to her bedroom, staring out of the tiny trellis windows at the deserted street three floors below. _Hail Britannia!_ A frayed poster triumphantly declares. _Glorious Britannia!_ Another proclaims. They flutter desolately in the wind.

The bed is unmade, covers piled haphazardly about as though someone had fished them off the floor and dumped them there as an afterthought. She realizes that it must have been his handiwork, scooping up their discarded and rumpled sheets before he left. _How thoughtful,_ she finds herself thinking, and she cannot help the slight tinge of bitterness that colours the thought. He had been particularly rough last night, biting and forceful and possessive, and she is still sore in several places. She thinks that it has something to do with his current assignment, but she will not ask, and he will not answer anyway.

It is the way they operate. She will complete her assignments, and he will complete his, and they will talk of nothing that matters. He will come to her when he wants to, and she will – she will be here, waiting. She unlocks her bedside drawer and gingerly picks up her communications device, checking for new contracts. She has none today, and she supposes she should be grateful. Her previous assignment had been a long and grueling one, a stealth contract from a rebel group. She still bears the scars from that; long puckered lines that run deep on her torso. But that was another time, and she is here now.

She is tidying the bed, tucking the sheets into neat hospital corners when she finds it. His tie lies half-hidden under her bed, hastily discarded during their passionate frenzy last night. The silk is butter-soft under her fingers, one of his few luxuries, and she lightly strokes it several times before stopping herself. The tie crumples easily in her balled fist.

She will have to return this to him, she knows, and she is sure that he will be upset at having forgotten it, but it is here with her now, and she _deserves_ this tiny, tiny piece of him. He is always so careful to leave nothing behind. In the mornings after he visits, it is only the lingering scent of him and the faint indent on the pillow next to her that convinces her that he was here at all.

It would not be hard to find out what he is doing. One call to the Agency will give her his location, and she is sure that Jack would be willing to fill her in on his assignment details. But that is a dark and firm line she has drawn, and she will not cross it. She tucks the tie into the drawer of her table.

The apartment is tiny but two sizes too big, and the quiet is oppressive. She needs to do _something_. She was not made to be still.

It is two minutes after fourteen, and Rose Tyler heads to the Agency for an assignment.

* * *

><p>The Agency is a vast underground complex, hidden under a façade of pretty suburban houses. The Government knows nothing of them, but there are always whispers, and they all have prices on their heads. She relishes this life.<p>

Security is airtight, despite her having worked here for four years. Her Beretta is stripped and scanned before she is allowed to reassemble it, and her thumbprint and retina scans are taken. She heads down three floors to find Jack.

"Hey, Bubba!" His greeting is exuberant when she sees him, bent over tactical charts and maps at his desk. She endures his enthusiastic kisses to her cheek with a long-suffering smile, and loops her arm around his as she tugs him to the cafeteria.

"So, Jack," she begins, and he raises an amused eyebrow at her meandering greeting. She pokes him for this. "I want a new assignment."

He laughs, a deep-chested rumble, as if it is the most amusing thing he has ever heard. "Are you kidding?" he begins, before taking in her glare and backpedaling. "Okay, not kidding. But really, Rose, you know that's a no-go."

"Why?" she asks, huffing impatiently. She _hates_ inactivity, and she needs work to displace ghosts and specters from her mind. She is tired, too tired, of her thoughts constantly revolving around wants and can't-haves. She needs change.

"Why?" he parrots her incredulously, and his eyebrows shoot up almost comically. "Jesus, Rose, do you even have to ask me that?" He runs a hand through his perfectly-coiffed hair, and she knows that he is genuinely distressed. She cannot bring herself to feel guilty for being the cause.

"You nearly _died_ in the previous mission. You were _butchered,_ Rose. _Butchered_. You didn't have to see the state you were in when he – "

It is her turn for surprise. "Who?" she butts in. An anonymous savior had brought her in, and they had refused to reveal who it was when she had regained consciousness.

Jack ignores her. " – when you were dragged in. You were nearly _cleaved into two._ You're damn lucky we have the technology to patch you back up at all, and now you want to run off and get yourself killed again?"

He pauses to take a breath, and she is reeling at the revelation. She had known that she had been badly wounded, but no one had ever revealed the true extent of her injury to her. Her eyes are wide and shocked, and Jack realizes his error too late.

"Oh, hell. Rose – I'm sorry, I didn't mean for you to find out that way. I'm such an idiot. Look, it's okay." He gathers her into his arms, ignoring the stares of the other Agency employees around them in the hallway. "It's over now. Shhh."

He rocks her in his arms, and she takes several shuddering breaths. She grips the lapels of his leather jacket hard, like they are anchors in a storm. Her breathing is shallow and labored, and she knows she will slip into a panic attack if she keeps this up. She needs to _breathe,_ needs to reestablish the calm _in, out, in, out_ rhythm of _inhale _and _exhale_. Jack's hands are soothing on her back, and she tries to concentrate on that, but his words echo in her mind like broken records. _Cleaved into two._

The scar on her torso burns against her shirt, and she wants so badly for it to stop. She thinks of the number of lives she has taken, and thinks of window panes under her fingers. She thinks of ties and cold sheets, and relationships that aren't. They are standing in the corridor, and it occurs to her that she is standing here, where many dead soldiers have walked before, and there isn't much difference between them and her.

She wants to fall apart. She wants to let herself fall apart. She wants all these things, but _Rose Tyler is one of the Agency's best, and she always gets the job done._ She will hold herself together, because she has to.

"What's going on?" comes a voice behind her, and her resolve almost breaks. It is _him_, and that is _his_ voice, its cadence and timbre and lilt familiar to her like the back of her hand. She tries to pull away from Jack, but his arms are firm.

"We're fine," he responds, "Rose just had a bad shock, that's all. It's alright, you can go."

"I wasn't talking to you, I was asking Rose." His voice borders on scornful, and she knows that there is no love lost between the two most important men in her life. She tugs away from Jack a little, just enough so that she will be audible.

"Doctor, I'm fine. Really. Just – just overwhelmed, but I'll be alright." She turns her head a little, and gives him a tremulous smile. "I'm always all right." His eyes are searching on her face, and it is a long moment before he nods. He turns and leaves.

Most days, she finds herself wishing that people would take her words less literally.

* * *

><p>She whiles away her day at the Agency doing her paperwork, the side effect of doing what they do. There are endless forms to fill for bounties to be claimed, names to be removed from hit lists, and contracts for organisations to be accepted. When she leaves the complex at a quarter past eighteen, she is the last to depart.<p>

Her flat is dark when she lets herself in, and she leans against the door, exhausted. Her sigh is loud in the expanse of her apartment, world-weary and infinitely tired. Her exhale is visible around her in the frigid night, and she raises a hand in a vain attempt to catch it.

"You took your time getting here." She startles at the voice, and curses herself for lowering her guard. Her Beretta out in an instant, safety flicked off, aimed at the languidly reclining shadow on her sofa. She throws the light switch on, and relaxes and lowers her gun when she sees that it is him.

"Don't do that," she chides, replacing her gun into its holster. She strips off her coat and toes off her shoes, dropping them haphazardly to the floor on her way to the kitchen.

"Hmm?" His answer is almost languorous, and that is enough warning for her. She turns to look at him, takes in his deliberately insouciant posture, reclining on the sofa with an arm propped up on the side. His eyes are black, icy and cold, and she almost recoils. He is _furious_.

"What was that all about, earlier?" His voice is nonchalant, all steel wrapped in cloth, and for a moment, she is terrified of him. They have never fought, and she doesn't know what she is supposed to do or say. _The Oncoming Storm,_ she has heard the gossip mill whisper about him, and has never truly understood what they had meant. Now she does.

She is puzzled. "What about earlier?" His eyes go darker, glinting in the room light.

"In the hallway. With _Jack_." She leans against the wall that extends into the kitchen, facing him.

"In the hall – Oh." She swallows. "Oh." She tears her gaze away from his, staring at her scuffed sneakers, and her hands subconsciously come up to wrap around herself. He takes in her defensive, insecure body language, and is up like a shot.

"What did he do?" His hands are firm on her arms, and his scent is everywhere, musk and spice and uniquely him. "What did Jack say?"

She shakes her head, still avoiding his eyes. "Nothing I shouldn't have known," she replies, and her right hand is cool over the vicious scar on her torso under her shirt.

"Rose," he begins, and a finger under her chin has her tilting her head upwards to meet his gaze. "Tell me what Jack said."

She takes several steadying breaths, and shakes her head a little. "No." She raises a hand to his chest to nudge him away, but he is solid and firm under her touch, immoveable and resolute.

"No, I – I can't." His hand lifts to rest atop hers on his chest, and his heart is a steady beat beneath her touch. He tugs her hand up to his lips, and presses a soft kiss to the inside of her palm. He holds her palm to his cheek, and turns to nuzzle into it. She nearly breaks at the gesture.

"You can," he tells her, and his voice is warm and soothing. She wants to trust him, to lean into him, to open herself up to him completely, and it is so, so tempting, but there are lines that have been drawn and must be kept, or she will lose herself in him. He is everything to her, she knows, but to him, she – she is convenient.

"It's nothing, really," she tries to reassure. Her free hand ghosts over the puckered line hidden under her shirt, almost as an afterthought. His eyes follow the motion, and when she notices this, she realizes her mistake. He drops her hand, and his eyes are hard.

"He told you." It is more a statement than it is a question.

She swallows. "It isn't your concern –" He cuts her off with a sharp downward jerk of his hand, and he backs away from her to stand by the sofa. She reiterates her point. "It's none of your business."

She is furious with him, livid at his sudden decision to _care_. He has no right to any more of her, no right to act as if she was wrong for trying to keep this from him, no right to act like he cares enough for her to go to him with her fears and insecurities and problems. She has no place in his life other than his bed, and he has _no right_ to ask any more from her when he gives her nothing in return.

"_None of my business?_ None of my – " His voice is incredulous, and she feels his anger barely leashed below the surface. His jaw is clenched, and his hands are balled into fists.

"It isn't," she continues, and strides towards him. She is too far gone to care, too angry to worry about what this will mean for them. "It was my mission, my assignment, my contract. It was my cross to bear. My injuries." She pauses in her tirade, and is hit by a sharp stab of realization.

"You knew," she whispers. The betrayal is searing, the scar a brand against her cool skin. Her voice rises. "You knew, and you never told me. How did you find out? Did you read my mission report?" His non-reply twists the knife, and she almost chokes on the next words. "You had _no right_ to read my reports. I may sleep with you, but that does not give you any right over any other area in my life. I respected your boundaries! I toed the lines of your private little life and let you keep your secrets! I wait for you, like your dirty little secret, and you – "

His hand snakes behind her neck, and she is forcefully tugged towards him when his lips crash into hers. His mouth is white-hot and branding, and he tastes of enigmas and lost hopes and smoke. The kiss is hard, angry and punishing, and she inwardly rails at her susceptibility to him and inability to pull away. His tongue is harsh against hers, battling and dominating, and she can feel the potency of his fury and anger. Her hands fist into his dress shirt.

When he yanks himself away, his profile is harsh and cutting against the light of the room. He removes her hand from his shirt, and she can see him begin to shut her out, like he always does after sex or when he sees her in the Agency.

He picks his coat up from the back of the sofa, turning away to slide into it like armour or a second skin. When he faces her again, his expression is shuttered, and this is not _her_ Doctor anymore. This is _the_ Doctor.

Her breathing is loud in her ears, and her heart is breaking. He walks to the front door, and makes to open it before he inclines his head slightly. His hand is on the knob, and his back is kept to her.

"I was the one who brought you in."

He opens the door, and is bathed in the brighter light of the hallway for a moment, his features starkly defined, and she thinks he looks like an avenging angel, or a broken man.

The door closes behind him, and the sound reminds her of a gunshot.

When she checks her drawer later, his tie is gone.


	4. Old Souls

**A/N: **As always, beta'd by the wonderful** glory_jean **on LJ.

* * *

><p><em><em>**4. OLD SOULS**

_When: Post-Ground Zero_

Her hand connects with the lamp on the bedside table, and Rose Tyler jerks awake as it crashes to the floor. He is up like a shot beside her, gun in hand and safety flicked off, and she lays a hand on his arm in reassurance that there is no danger present. Her breaths are heavy with shock, and her heart is pounding in her ears. He runs a warm hand down her back in comforting strokes.

The room around them is decidedly spartan, more utilitarian than anything else. The limp curtains by the window are drawn shut, and the room holds nothing more than a double bed and a desk. A door to the side leads off into the equally plain bathroom. The wallpaper had once been a rather pretty green, she surmises, but time has turned it into the putrid colour of vomit.

The hand on her back stops stroking, and she is left almost bereft at the loss of his warmth. He climbs out of bed, walking over to the desk where his coat lies neatly folded. Rummaging around in a pocket, he pulls out an aged fob watch.

"What time is it?" she asks, wishing their night of rest hadn't passed so fast. Life on the run is exciting and thrilling, but it is also exhausting, and sometimes she just wants it to stop. He doesn't answer, now absorbed in reading a sheet of paper he had pulled out from his coat. Walking over to her side of the bed, he absentmindedly hands her the watch.

The watch in her palm is warm from his hand, and it is a solid and assuring weight. She runs her fingers over the cover, tracing the intricate swirls and patterns that had been engraved. Delicately prying the cover open to read the time, she admires the ornate work that had gone into the creation of this watch, and wonders at its cost. It must surely have been expensive, and his lifestyle does not support this sort of luxury. The cover pops open with minimal fuss, and she notes that the inner face bears an engraving in looping cursive.

_To John 'Theta' Smith_

_One for sorrow, Two for joy – Forever._

She wonders about him, and wonders at the infinite number of secrets he must hold. She is among those secrets, she knows, things-she-once-knew and the girl-she-once-was counting among the detritus of things he knows but will not tell her. It is four, and they have to depart soon. A safehouse never remains safe for long. She presses the watch closed slowly, carefully, almost as if she is afraid that it will break under her touch. Somehow she knows that this watch is special to him, and she thinks he might never forgive her if she loses or breaks it.

"John," she calls to him, holding the watch in an outstretched hand. "Doctor." He is still absorbed in the contents of the letter he is reading, and merely raises his chin a little in acknowledgement of her. She tries again. "Theta."

His head jerks up in a movement so sudden that she is startled out of her train of thought. Before she can regain it, he cuts her off. "What did you call me?" His voice is soft, low, without inflection, so soft that she almost misses it.

Unsure of his reaction, she doesn't know how to respond. His eyes are deep and searching on hers, and she wonders if she has crossed one of their unspoken lines. "Theta," she says again, and her voice is stronger. "I called you Theta."

He draws closer to her, and retrieves the fob watch from her hand, flicking it open with a deft motion that convinces her he has done it many times before. "And you saw it in here? You got my name from the watch?"

She nods. He shuts the watch, and grips it tightly in his fist. She can see the whites of his knuckles, pale in the relative dimness of the room. It is a long while before he relaxes his hand and turns away from her. His face is shuttered.

"We have to leave," he tells her, and they gather their scant possessions. When he turns to lock the safehouse door behind them, it is the first time she notices that his key is identical to the one that hangs on a chain around her neck.

Her mind wonders at this as he takes her hand, and they slip off into the night.

* * *

><p>Beijing is a good place to lose a tail. The streets are crowded and noisy, and the lights are bright and flashing. Teetering skyscrapers hustle for space alongside shambling buildings of a bygone era, and glass and chrome are as easily found as brick and stone. The entire city is a breathing contradiction.<p>

They shake off their tail in a bustling street market, weaving in and out of stalls and peddlers hawking their wares. The din around them is deafening, and the aromas of hot food are everywhere. He leads her to a tiny alcove next to an abandoned temple, and they catch their breath in this miniscule spot of respite from the crowds.

Later, they wander down streets in a fairly suburban area, glad to be away from the noise and claustrophobia at the heart of the city. Beijing is crowded and densely populated, and the housing blocks around them soar into the sky in a bid to save land area. They stroll down narrow lanes hand in hand, speaking of everything and nothing. She points to a pretty poster on the wall and he hums in agreement, and he ushers her around puddles that have gathered in the pavement hollows.

This is the peace that exists between their lives. It will not last long, she knows, but it makes these brief moments sweeter.

They pass a park, and she can see several toddlers ambling about the sandpit in the distance. She can't explain the sudden pang in her chest or clenching in her gut, but she knows she smiles a little at their untainted innocence. Her fingers curl deeper into his hand, and he squeezes her hand lightly in response. She will not try to explain what this exchange between them means.

It is approaching seventeen, and the sun streaks the sky in angry lines of blood red and painful orange. The children in the park are bathed in this morbid glow, and she watches as they run off towards a woman when she calls for them. It is dinnertime, and the sky is bleeding.

The backs of the children disappear beyond her field of sight, and she sighs. "Three for a girl, and four for a boy," she murmurs, and wonders where the line came from.

He freezes beside her, and her arm is uncomfortably jolted by his abrupt halt in their walk. She looks up at him questioningly.

"Where did you hear that?" Hhe asks, and she can hear the catch in his voice.

"I don't know. It just came to me – it's a rather common rhyme, after all." Her tone is measured, and she wonders what other relic of her _(their)_ past she has drudged up now. She wants to know so badly, but he will not tell her, and the-girl-she-once-was weighs heavily on her mind.

"And so it is," he agrees, and she cannot help but feel that his words are like shields. They resume their walk at a leisurely pace, but the air between them is different now. The spectres of things she cannot remember and the ghosts of what she doesn't know she has done lie between them, and the distance that separates them is vast.

They wind up at a dinky Chinese restaurant as the clocks near nineteen. The shop is filled with the usual dinner crowd, buzzing with activity and movement, and it is a good place to lose themselves in.

He smiles a little when she orders deep-fried banana fritters, and shakes his head when she asks him why. She finds herself using chopsticks with ease, and wonders at this other newfound skill. She has never used chopsticks before. She doesn't know who she is, not really, not after meeting him, and she tries to tell herself that it is okay. She uses her chopsticks as skillfully as a native, recalls herself speaking flawless Russian, and a tiny voice at the back of her mind tells her it isn't.

He does not comment on her skill with the utensil, and their meal is shared in relative silence. She frowns. "It's funny, how you talk so little." His chopsticks pause for a brief moment before continuing their journey to his mouth. It is almost seamless, his movement, but she had been watching, and she had caught the jerk of his hand. She presses on. "I don't know, but I just – You just seem to be the type that'd talk a lot more, you know?"

His eyes are unreadable on hers when he responds. "Really? What gave you that idea?"

"A gut feeling," she lies smoothly, before realising it isn't one – it isn't a lie, not really. Her hand grips her chopsticks with a little too much force, and the banana fritter she had been grasping with it slips and falls back into her bowl.

He chews slowly, eyes kept on hers, and he is almost contemplative when he replies. "Ah," he says, and the single syllable is nothing and everything at once.

The remainder of their meal is quiet.

* * *

><p>They reach a new safehouse at twenty-two, one of the dozens that he tells her are scattered throughout almost every major city in the world. She doesn't know why they were set up or by whom, and she is sure he will not tell her even if she asks.<p>

All safehouses are the same: spartan, plain, and barely furnished. They are not built for comfort, but she is too tired to care. The bed is soft when she collapses on it, too exhausted to toe off her shoes or strip off her jacket.

There is movement somewhere to her right, and she feels him tug off her sneakers. She is pliant and unresisting when he nudges her to her side to ease off her jacket, and sighs in pleasure when he tucks her in. After some wiggling and struggling, she manages to get her jeans off, and lets her mind drift as the sounds of him washing up and changing reach her ears.

She hears the sound of the light switch being flicked off, and the room plunges into darkness. The bed beside her dips, and his warmth is a welcome heat next to her. He doesn't lie down, and instead sits with his back facing her, staring out of the tiny window.

Despite being caught up in the languorous tendrils of drowsiness, the question is strong in her mind, and she cannot help but ask.

"Why?" His shoulders tense, and she swallows once before continuing. "Why is it so important to you that I remember?"

He doesn't answer, not for a long while, so long that she almost thinks he won't. But he does, eventually, and his reply cuts a yawning hole in her chest.

"I need you to explain why you left me."

Neither of them gets much sleep that night.


	5. All Along the Watchtower

**A/N:** Beta'd by **glory_jean**.

* * *

><p><strong>5. ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER<strong>

_When: Pre-Ground Zero_

Jack's desk is messy. It is a veritable heap of papers and pens and random detritus, and it is absolutely impossible to find anything you want on a good day. On a bad day, it is even worse, and it makes you want to set the entire thing on fire.

Rose Tyler is having a bad day. She is also standing over Jack's desk, attempting to locate Surveillance Form 2-D amidst the pile of junk that is strewn across it. Glancing at the clock on the bookshelf to her right, she notes that it is approaching ten. She has an assignment briefing at half-past, and she needs the form _now, _or she will be unable to sign out her Mark VI sub-atomic detector for the mission. She contemplates blowing his desk up.

At quarter past she gives up, and leaves the office to hunt Jack down. The Agency is sluggish in the mornings, and few people litter the minimalist whitewashed hallways. Jack is a creature of habit, and she knows that she will be able to find him in the cafeteria. As she nears the chrome double doors that lead into the food court, the low timbre of male voices reach her, and she wonders at the additional numbers today. Laughter is heard, and it gives her pause. It is not a common thing, laughter, not in the Agency or in their world. She savours the sound.

The sensors swing the double doors open as she approaches, and she steps through into the cafeteria, fluorescent overhead lights almost hurting her eyes. She has never liked this place; the white lighting and sterile tables remind her too much of hospitals and interrogation rooms. But maybe, she thinks, it really is an odd mix of both. They come here to heal their solitary souls, and to find out what they can. It is funny how much people can talk with food in their mouths.

She spies Jack sitting at his usual table in the far left of the room, and walks over to him. He is not alone, and she studies the stranger as she nears them. This man is tall, wiry and lean, and something about the way he holds himself, wary and apart-but-not-quite, tells her that he is a killer. Her instincts tell her to run. His long, brown overcoat is draped over the chair next to him, and he sits leaned back, hands tucked into the pockets of his slacks. He wears, she thinks, his outfit like an armour, or a mask, or a shell. His eyes are fathomless and unreadable on hers.

"Rose!" Jack's chipper greeting is loud in the expanse of the cafeteria, and she almost winces at the volume. She waves a hand in quick reply, and smiles as she draws out a chair and takes a seat next to this stranger. "This is John," he continues, gesturing to the stranger at the table. She sends him a friendly hello. "He's an Operative."

She is surprised at this. She has never seen or heard of John before, not around the Agency or on this continent, and she wonders at his sudden appearance. Her Watcher senses itch to know how he has evaded her notice.

"Oh?" Her brows are drawn and crinkled in curiosity, and John's lips curve upwards in a small smile. "Which initiative are you with?"

Jack interrupts her question with a disapproving glance. "That's clas – "

"It's fine," John states, and his voice is low and smooth, like caramel and honey. She finds herself thinking of flies in amber, and shakes off the thought. "I'm with the TARDIS initiative, TARDIS being – "

"The Treaty Arrangement of the Reconvened Dissenting Independent States," she finishes for him, and his brows shoot up in surprise.

"How did you know that?" he queries. "We're classified."

She sends him a secret smile, and his eyes glint in the light at this, like gold dust or gunfire. "I'm a Watcher."

"Our best, too," Jack adds, and she squeezes his hand affectionately in response. She notes the way John tracks this action. "So, John, what brings you to Britannia? I thought the TARDIS initiative kept mainly to Americania and Eurasia."

"It does," he replies. "But the Agency requested me."

Her eyes jump to meet Jack's. The Agency is self-sufficient and far-reaching; their Operatives are brutally trained and highly successful. That they should send for external assistance does not sit well with her, and she frowns at this. _A storm is coming_, a small voice in her head tells her, and she wonders at the thought.

"Now that," Jack says, brushing her shoulder lightly, "I really can't tell you why."

There is companionable silence for several moments, before John and Jack make to leave, standing and retrieving their coffee mugs and coats.

"Briefing," John tells her in way of an explanation, and she smarts that she doesn't know what it is about. His eyes linger on hers for a drawn second, and she is caught up in their depths before he turns away. There are so many secrets hidden in his eyes, secrets she wants to know, and the man hidden beneath all of it. The two men depart, and she is alone in the cafeteria. Her heart rate is accelerated.

It is not until she walks back to Jack's office that she realizes that she had forgotten to ask him for the form.

* * *

><p>She browbeats Donna into agreeing to allow her to sign out her Mark VI equipment without Form 2-D before discovering that she has been pulled from her assignment. She is livid at this slight – <em>your skills are no longer required on this mission,<em> Ianto Jones tells her – but she swallows this down, because Jones is an _Operative_, and she is just a Watcher, even if she is the best. Operative Jones is tight-lipped when she demands to know why, and anger burns the back of her chest.

"The Operative we're sending in for this has just relayed that he doesn't need a Watcher," Jones tells her, and she clenches and unclenches her fist in fury. "And no," he continues, noting her questioning glare, "I can't tell you why. You know that's strictly classified."

_Classified._ It is a word she has comes to hate. She wants to know everything, wants the information of the world spread out like a canvas before her to do whatever she pleases with it. She is a Watcher, and she is meant to _know_ things. She takes a deep breath, and exhales slowly. She is a Watcher, and what they won't tell her, she will find out.

The Repository is on sub-level thirteen, a sprawling cavern of files and books and records. Everything there is to know can be found here, if you know where to look for it. The room goes on for miles in all directions in the expanse of the underground. It takes five hours just to travel from one end of the Repository to the other. You can look for everything here, she remembers hearing her mentor say, but you will only ever keep looking if it doesn't want to be found.

There is no organisation to this archive, no ostensible manner of arrangement. Files and papers and reams lie strewn about in teetering haphazard heaps, some yellow and fading with age and others crisp and copy-warm. This is the playground of the Watchers. This is their fort of information, their realm of knowledge. No one but the Watchers can find anything here that doesn't want to be found. This is their secret, their in-your-face booby trap.

_John,_ she thinks, and decides to start there first. She doesn't know his last name or code name or Operative title, but she is a Watcher, and the TARDIS initiative is not as obscure as it would like to think it is. Her palm is scanned, and she is allowed access to the Repository archives. She pools all she knows about him together, and generates a series of numbers that she keys into the terminal.

_You don't kill a Watcher,_ she remembers the saying going, _not when they probably know when you die._

_528491,_ she enters, and smiles when an automated transporter draws up next to her. She steps onto it, scans her palm again, and it takes her forty minutes deep to the Northwest of the Repository. She is brought to a high mahogany shelf, stuffed with thick leather-bound tomes caked with dust and age, and she puzzles at this. _528491,_ she recalls, and looks up five shelves, two books to the right, eight alternate titles beginning with A to the diagonal left, down the sum of the first four prime numbers, nine hardcovers over, and the first one to the southeast of that.

She pulls out a thick file, decidedly out of place in this shelf filled with ancient texts. It is non-descript, this folder, beige and typical of military dossiers, weighty and solid in her hands. She hesitates for a brief moment before flipping it open. She pushes away the thought that this feels almost like betrayal.

_John Smith,_ the personnel information sheet reads, and there is a photo of him attached. He looks younger here, she thinks, less hard and more idealistic. Less tired. The hollows in his cheeks are not so pronounced, and he borders on handsome. He would be handsome, she amends, if not for the haunted look in his eyes. It is a look he carries around still, and she wonders at this.

_Theta,_ she learns his code name is, and is amused at its similarity to hers. The Greek alphabet, she thinks, and traces the swirling sign of _theta_ on the sheet with her finger, followed by the looping _rho_ that is hers. _Death_, she recalls. _Theta is the symbol of death_. Her finger stops abruptly.

_The Doctor,_ she discovers, is his Operative title, and she puzzles at its non-conventionality. She has heard of _The Master_ and _The War Chief_ and _The Rani_, but nothing as, well, _good_ as The Doctor. She ploughs on, and finds that he is twenty-eight, a native of Britannia and a graduate of the Prydonian Chapter of Operative Academy. She is vaguely impressed at this; the Prydonian Chapter is well known for being the best, though also infamous for producing the most rebels. She makes to turn the page, fingers slipping for purchase on the smooth paper.

"I was quite a hell-raiser back then, during my Academy days." He is there, leaning against the metal shelf in the row ahead of her, cocky grin and arrogance coating him like second skin. She drops the file, and gasps as the sheets scatter in disarray on the concrete floor.

"What are you – How did you get here?" She gathers the dropped sheets in hasty, jerky movements, mind flying in a thousand directions at once. For him to be here would mean that the system of the Watchers is compromised; the knowledge of decades and lifetimes hang in the balance – Operatives should _never, ever_ know what the Watchers know.

"Oh, don't worry," he tells her, waving an indolent hand at her obvious unease. "You Watchers are a sneaky lot, this system you've got here is madness." He looks at her, slowly, eyes raking up her stiff form. "I'm only here because I like to know where my file is kept, and you," he pauses, tapping his chin, "you're _very_ good at this. I'm honestly surprised you were able to track my file down with the scant information you had."

"I'm a Watcher," she starts, before pausing. "And I'm the best."

His eyes are measured on hers, almost contemplative. "That you are, Rose Tyler, that you are." She opens her mouth to speak, to demand how he knows her name, but he beats her to it.

"Rose 'Rho' Tyler, age twenty-five. The Agency's best Watcher. Part of the POWELL initiative – the Pact Of Wales, England, and Localised Liaisons, formed even before Britannia, mind you. Carries a Beretta 3032 Tomcat, though I can't resist pointing out that the .32 ACP cartridge of that is rather underpowered, don't you think? Likes chips. Mother, Jackie Tyler, deceased. Father, Peter Tyler, Torchwood initiative, deceased. Anything else?"

She is stunned, too shocked to feel afraid at his casual summation of her life. Her mind draws a blank when she tries to coherently reply. "You – You talk a lot. Really. A lot."

He stares at her for a brief moment, before breaking down into laughter. "That's all you can say? Me, an unfamiliar Operative, accosts you in the highly-secure Repository with everything there is to know about your life, and all you can say is that I talk a lot?" His mirth annoys her, because his words are true. She frowns at this uncharacteristic feeling of trust and familiarity that she has around him, and berates herself for her lack of caution and eloquence.

"Yeah, well, it's not as if that isn't true," she shoots back at him, slightly flustered and caught-out by his unpredictability. "Look, I have to go. It was nice meeting you and everything, but I've got things to do, lives to save…" She trails off, stuffing his file back into the shelf where she found it and turning to head back to her transporter.

"I was the one who got you pulled from that assignment, you know," he says conversationally, nonchalance dripping from his voice. "I asked Jack to pull a few strings to get you dropped from that."

Before she can register what she is doing, she turns and rounds on him, eyes ablaze. "Why would you _do_ that? You are _not_ an Agency Operative, regardless of whether they requested for you or not. You have no say in the way things are done here!" He holds his hands up in mock surrender, and his eyes are dancing when they meet hers.

"We-ell," he begins, drawing out the syllables. "That mission was routine, and you're good, you deserve better."

He pauses, and sends her a slow smile. "And I only take the best."

She bristles at his arrogance, but she cannot help but feel drawn to him, like a moth to a flame. "But what makes you think the best wants to join you?"

"Oh, Rose," he says, and his grin is so smug that she is so very tempted to knock it off his face. "Because _I_ am the best. I'm brilliant, me."

He has wandered over to her other side, and is fiddling with the transporter controls. She wants to tell him that it is DNA activated, but decides to watch _(she is a Watcher, after all)_ and observe what he does. He pops open the screen console and works with the elaborate wiring and circuitry as she looks on and ponders their bizarre exchange.

"Theta," she calls, experimenting with the word, rolling it around in her mouth. He pauses, a jerk almost, before resuming his tinkering. She is curious and intrigued by this man, this odd stranger who burst into her life. "Why don't you like that name?"

This time, he stops his work entirely, and turns to face her. "How did you – " Realisation dawns, and he smiles a little. "You're a Watcher," he surmises, before she can repeat it to him. He returns to fiddling with the controls. "No one calls me that, not anymore."

"It was an Academy nickname," she concludes, and he shifts a little in surprise. "Yes, it was." Not content to be one-upped by her, he throws a question that nearly stops her breath over his shoulder.

"Just like _Rho,_ isn't it? Rho was your Academy nickname." She swallows once, and then again, words stuck in her throat. She doesn't respond, not for a long while, and he turns towards her after several drawn-out seconds. Her eyes are dark and secretive on his. She nods once, a slight tilt of her head, graceful but almost-jerky. She is a walking paradox, he thinks.

"So, Rose," he continues, stepping away from the transporter and wiping his hands on his slacks. The transporter rolls off towards the main landing where she had come from, the result of his tinkering. She gapes.

"You – The transporter. It left." He hums his agreement, and is bemused by her surprise. "How am I going to get back?"

She draws her eyes up to meet his, and finds them full of excitement and thrill. "Rose, Rose," he tuts. "Didn't they ever teach you this in Watcher training?"

He comes up next to her, and takes her hand. His hand is warm in hers, and she thinks she could get used to this.

"Run," he tells her. They do.


	6. Jericho

**A/N:** You know the drill - as usual, beta'd by the ever-patient **glory_jean**.

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><p><strong>6. JERICHO<strong>

_When: Pre-Ground Zero_

There is a gun pressed to the back of her head, cold and hard and unforgiving, and she wonders if this is what everyone she has ever killed feels before they die.

She doesn't think so. It is rather ironic, she muses, considering that the gun held to her head is hers. Her trusty Beretta 3032 Tomcat. She wonders if the laughter that bubbles at the back of her throat is normal. She doubts it. The bitter taste of the hallucinogenic sedative they had force-fed her keeps her grounded to reality. Or what is left of her reality, anyway.

She is pretty certain that her brain is going to be splattered in undignified globs on the floor and walls soon. There is no way to get out of this alive, and she thinks back fondly (or what she _thinks_ is fondly – she's drugged, remember?) to her Watcher Academy days, where Instructor Whitehall-Pritchard (that pompous prick) had drilled them for hours on Captive Survival 101.

A steel-toed boot connects with her stomach, and she slumps over in pain (again, really, this is getting old). She wonders why her brain is still in her skull, and what they want to do with her now. When she coughs, there is blood on the floor. She thinks it looks rather pretty (quite Picasso-esque, if she does say so herself). She is quite sure that she is going mad.

"She won't talk." Her captors are not the most loquacious bunch, and they mostly grunt, gesture, and speak in monosyllables in way of communication. She would be more amused if she weren't suffering from three fractured ribs, a dislocated shoulder, one black eye and six broken fingers. The pain is excruciating, and it reminds her than she is alive. It reminds her that there are things in life far, far worse than death.

"Oh, give it time. She will." This is another voice, slimy and insidious. She recognizes it as the man who dragged her in, a rogue Operative from the Welsh branch of the Agency. She lies crumpled on the floor in a bloody heap, but summons enough strength to spit at his feet. Traitors like him, she thinks, are worse than scum. Her hate for him stems not from the collapse of her mission, but from the hundreds of lives she is sure he must have taken as a double-crosser.

Her father died at the hands of a man like him, and the intensity of her glare does not lessen even after she is forcefully backhanded. "Bitch," he shouts to her at her, and spittle sprays her face as he drags her up to his eye level by her hair. She does not give him the satisfaction of crying out in pain. He pulls out a hunting knife, long and gleaming in the harsh light of the room. He smiles, a cold and hollow rictus that has her swallowing once despite herself.

"I think I'm going to enjoy this," he murmurs into her ear, licking flecks of her blood from her cheek. She recoils and attempts to unbalance him and lunge for the knife, but the sedatives have made her sluggish and slow, and he easily sidesteps her. "Oh, yes," he continues. "I'm going to enjoy this very much."

"Do you know what I'm going to do?" he asks, and it is a mockery of a query. She would have answered, if not for the hand around her throat choking her. She would spit on his grave. "I'm going to cut you up slowly, inch by inch. I'm going to cut you into two. You're going to die screaming." They strap her to a medical table spread-eagled, and she is too far gone for fear. "By the time I'm through with you, you're going to beg for death, and I will gladly give it to you."

Her answering expletives earn her another broken finger.

"So, _Rose_," he begins, and she wonders how they know her real name, and who betrayed her? How had they found her out? What had gone wrong? "I'd suggest you cooperate with us. Tell me where he is."

_Who,_ she wants to yell. _Who?_ They keep asking her about _him,_ and she doesn't know who _he_ is, or what they want from her, but she will not cave either way, because _he_ must be someone crucial, critical to the Agency, and _the Watchers watch but do not tell._

Her silence earns her the slice of the knife, and the pain is blinding when he slides the blade in a mockery of a lover's caress over her torso. It is a light incision, but the meaning is clear. She has no doubt that the cuts will get deeper until she tells them what they want to know, or until she dies from blood loss. It will sooner be the latter, she swears.

"It's such a shame, really," he sighs, his vile breath ghosting over the bloody expanse of her exposed belly. "You're such a pretty one. I'd hate to slice you up like that, but you know what? I think he'd hate it even more." He leans in, close to her ear, and the heat from his breath has bile rising to her throat. "Maybe he won't want to fuck you anymore, once I ugly you up a bit."

He chuckles, and the sound is vicious. "That is, if you even survive. Which, I assure you, you won't."

The blade digs into her torso again, and she bites down hard on her bottom lip to keep from screaming. The last thing she recalls is the taste of blood in her mouth and the vague sound of a door slamming open as she slides into the welcoming arms of unconsciousness.

* * *

><p>The long, puckered line on her torso mocks her, the daily reminder of her failure and ineptitude.<p>

Neither of them had talked about it when he saw the angry scar the first time they had sex after her assignment. They both know the hazards of their lives, and the pains that come with it. She says nothing about his restlessness, and he says nothing about her nightmares. It is an arrangement that works well for them.

The long, puckered line on her torso mocks her, and she traces it lightly, watching her fingers trail across the pink scar in the mirror. His words echo in her mind, like phantoms and specters that won't leave her alone. _I was the one who brought you in._ There are too many questions that weigh heavily on her tired mind.

She should find him, she supposes. To apologise. To talk things out. To draw and redraw the careful lines and boundaries of their not-quite-relationship. A shower turns off in an apartment above, and the bathroom is plunged into silence. It is too loud.

The long, puckered line on her torso mocks her.

Her memories of her torture and captivity are distant, half-remembered and submerged under layers of other horrors and all the running that she does. Her mission report on her captivity and capture had been vague, brief and glossed-over in her inability to recall. It frightens her, that she can forget something like that. Something as horrible as that. As much as she needs to forget, she doesn't want to. It makes her wonder what else she can forget.

She knows where he lives. She could go there and find him, she muses, but rejects the idea as soon as it is formed. He has never brought her to his place, and that is another line she has carefully toed. She will not ask for anything he does not freely give.

They have only one neutral ground, and that is the Agency. It is a quarter to thirteen, and she thinks she might just catch him there. She leaves the bathroom and dresses in the quiet, and sighs a little when her shirt drops to cover the vicious scar on her torso.

Her Beretta is a comforting weight on her hip.

* * *

><p>Before she sets out to find him, she retreats to the Repository for knowledge. It does not take her long to locate her contract file, and she rifles through it for clues. She doesn't know how he managed to be there, or why he even was there. He shouldn't even have known where she was. There is, she is certain, something that she is missing.<p>

The sheaf of paper in the file is the same as it was when she had compiled it. The mission details, her field notes, her surveillance photographs are all exactly as they were. It is not until she nears the end that she finds it, a starched white sheet in official font, bearing the cryptic note of _Earmarked for Little Red._

The note is brief, and the four words are all that she can visibly detect on the single sheet. Mentally cataloguing it for future reference, she flips a few pages on and stumbles across an Operative report in familiar handwriting. She tries to convince herself that it is not surprise that has her hand crumpling the paper slightly beneath her fingers.

_The Doctor,_ it reads in the box where the Operative title is required. There is an internal war waging in her as her eyes read and reread his title over and over again. She doesn't know if she wins or loses, but her eyes drift down the page as she reads on.

His style is clipped and succinct, nothing like his usual verbal barrage of nonsense and hidden half-truths. _Found Watcher, critically injured. Brought Watcher to safehouse for emergency medical aid. Visible signs of torture, injuries include four fractured ribs, seven broken fingers, multiple bruises, a dislocated shoulder, head trauma, and deep lacerations on the right torso. No signs of sexual assault. Severe blood loss resulted in loss of consciousness. _

She shuts the report. Her fingers are pale against the dark green of the file, and she studies them intensely until she can breathe properly again. _Seven broken fingers._ The memory of snapping bones and searing pain is faint, but it lingers persistently.

She stands, and tells herself that it is the sudden rush of blood to her legs that makes her unsteady on her feet. Sliding the file back onto the shelf, she steps onto the transporter and departs the chasm that is the Repository. She has left the file behind, but the pressure around her heart tells her that she carries the ghosts of it with her.

He is in the Operative department, staring at the painting on the wall behind his desk when she finds him. His office is barely used, and the painting on the wall is the only personal artifact he has in the room. It is of the night sky, with the entirety of constellations and universes mapped out under a careful, loving hand. She knows he is the painter, though he has never told her so.

A single ballpoint pen lies on the desk surface, next to a blank pad. A chipped mug lies off to one side. A blank pad and a chipped mug, she thinks, and wonders what that says about him, or if it says anything at all. She reads him like a book with whole chapters missing, well and not-well at all. He is a quiet enigma, hidden behind words and frenetic dashes. He senses her entrance, and she observes the coiling tension around his shoulders as his back remains kept to her.

She shuts the door, and exhales slowly. He turns a little at that sound, head cocked to one side, as if his curiosity has been vaguely piqued.

"I'm sorry," she says, and tries to will him to hear the overwhelming weight of sincerity in her words. He nods once, but doesn't say more. She stands awkwardly behind him, trying to find the right words to continue. When none come, she makes to leave.

"You're alright?" he asks, and his voice is soft but subtly intense. She pauses, one hand on the door handle. Somewhere behind her, he moves, and she hears the faint rustle of cloth and man. His hands slide around her waist and he presses against her back, resting his chin on her shoulder. His warmth is comforting and solid. It is something she can almost believe she can hold on to.

"I am now," she sighs, and places her hand over his on her torso.

"I'm sorry," she repeats. He presses a kiss to her ear, and his fingers trace the outline of her scar.

"No," he whispers. "I am."

* * *

><p>They lie curled into each other on cooling sheets in her apartment sometime later, slick and heady with spent passion.<p>

They are languorous in the abating heat, drowsy and satiated and content in each other's arms. The scent of him is everywhere, musky and special and _him_, and it is around her and on her. There is silence, but it is the comfortable sort, not the oppressive quiet or choking lack of sound that they all too familiar with.

The evening sky outside is splattered with virulent reds and angry oranges, and when she holds her hands up in front of her, she fancies they are burning, bathed in the fiery colours of the setting sun. She blinks, and when she looks at her hands again, they are awash with blood. _Seven broken fingers._ She bolts up in bed, startling him from where he had been drawing lazy patterns on her back with a languid finger. When she checks again, her hands are pale and clean.

"Rose?" His voice is heavy with concern and something else she cannot put a name to, but it is not a main concern of hers, not now. A line drifts into her memory with startling clarity, and she doubles over as it resonates and slithers in her mind like sonorous, vicious snakes.

_Maybe he won't want to fuck you anymore, once I ugly you up a bit._

It repeats, over and over, like a broken record, or a fragment from a half-remembered dream. His hands are firm on her shoulders as he shakes her, but the ridged line that curves around her front like the gaping, frozen smile of death is the only thing she can feel. It is not painful – it is more of a peculiar mixture of ebbing numbness and dawning realization.

"You –" she manages, before having to pause for breath. "It's you."

He frowns down at her, clearly confused. She wants to laugh and cry, but he will think she has gone mad, even if she has, maybe, a little. "What?" He tilts her face up to study her, and she does not look away, not even when his eyes are piercing and searching on hers. "What, Rose? Tell me."

She struggles for coherence. "They – you're _him._ When they had me, they kept asking me where _he_ was. I didn't – I didn't know what they meant, but I get it now. I get it. You're _him._"

He breaks the gaze, and settles back down on the pillows. She knows this routine of his, knows the way he slides on this façade of nonchalance and unaffectedness like layers of protection and distance. She balls her hands into fists in her lap, and tells herself to keep breathing.

"I know," he says, and caresses the scar on her lower back. It is the closest she will get to an apology, because words like _I'm sorry_ and _I love you_ and _forgive me_ are not words he gives voice to. She leans into his touch despite her frustrations and anger and hurt, and wonders why she keeps doing this to herself.

"Why?" she questions at length, because even if he will not answer, it doesn't mean she cannot ask. "I don't understand."

His fingers trail up her spine, going over the curves and bumps of her back and across the sharp jut of her shoulder blades.

"You know the story?" he says, and it is abrupt, like the words tumbled out before he could stop them. "It's from one of those banned books. The Talmud? Qur'an? No, that's not it. The other one," he pauses, and waits for her Watcher knowledge to fill the gaps.

"The Bible," she sighs, and wonders where this is going, or if he is leading her off on another merry chase. She relaxes her hands, and tries to smooth the wrinkled sheets beneath her. The wrinkles remain, no matter how much she presses down. Life, she thinks, is mostly like that.

"Yes, right, the Bible," he agrees. She turns her head slightly, just enough to watch him out of the corner of her eye. "It's like that story in the Bible," he continues, before pausing, as if in thought. When he reaches for her, she thinks he has come to some conclusion.

He sits up, and tugs her close to him. His fingers dance across her breasts and the planes of her stomach and lower, and she bites back a moan of pleasure. "Jericho." He sucks her neck, hard enough to leave a mark. "Yes, Jericho."

His hand cups the nape of her neck, and pulls her in for a bruising kiss. When he releases her, his eyes are dark and unfathomable.

"The walls came crashing down."


	7. Magpies, Ravens, and Crows

****A/N: Free cookies to everyone who reviewed, you guys are _the best_.

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><p><em><em>

_When: Pre-Ground Zero_

She wakes in her bed, and knows that something is wrong. _The Watchers are screaming,_ she thinks. _Why?_

She yanks her bedside drawer open, before remembering that she has handed her comm device in for servicing. There is panic in the air, bitter-salty, like iron in the blood. Her pulse is racing, beating a drumming tattoo of foreboding in her mind. _The Watchers are screaming._ She has to get to the Agency _now._ Something is so, so very wrong.

Her clothes are shed with little care, and she is out the door in under a minute. Her shoes pound the hard pavement beneath her feet and her breaths are little explosions to her ears. Her skin is crawling, senses shivering with questions and suspended knowledge. _The Watchers are screaming._ She runs, and doesn't stop for the world.

She passes the information district, and feels hidden eyes mark her progress as she dashes through. The whispers of things unknown call out to her, and she beats them back with her speed and hurry. The wind carries a faint message, ghosting across her skin in caresses and icy stabs.

_There is news,_ it says. _All along the Watchtower. There is news._

She convinces herself that the crushing pressure around her heart is not fear.

X-X

Jack is in his office when she bursts through the door. He is up from his chair like a shot when he takes in the pallor of her cheeks and her trembling hands.

"Rose? What is it? What's wrong?" She grips his forearms like a vise. Her eyes are wide, and the pupils are dilated. She looks like a deer in the headlights, or a pinned-down butterfly.

"There has been news," she gasps out. "Bad news. All along the Watchtower."

He sits her down on the chair opposite his desk, and takes a seat in the high-backed leather swivel chair behind it. His eyes are serious on hers. "Tell me." His voice brooks no argument, firm and insisting.

She nods, and it is jerky and forced. She has to take several shaky breaths before she can start, but the words tumble out like dominoes once she begins. "The network. It's compromised. Some – some of us are dead. Ten Watchers, last night. All murdered in their homes. And this morning, the Repository, I don't – I can't quite explain this, you're not a Watcher, it's hard – it's not the same."

She pauses, and takes a deep breath. When she looks back at up, she doesn't see him, not really. Jack is sure she sees something worse. Much worse. "Something is wrong. Something is very wrong."

He nods slowly, and bites the inside of his cheek. She can almost see the cogs in his mind turning, and waits for the inevitable question. "What is it?"

He notes the way her hands ball in her lap, and the way her posture stiffens. She exhales, and her answer is the one phrase you never want to hear from a Watcher.

"We don't know."

The pencil he twirls between his fingers snaps cleanly into two.

X-X

She winds up in a beat-up part of the city, in a smoky pub somewhere in the south end of London. It is a quarter to two, and the curfew will be starting soon.

The glass of brandy in her hand is cold, a soothing coolness that seeps into her palm. The brandy burns a straight line down her throat. She tells herself that her knuckles are bone-white on the glass because of it. The other patrons in the pub are not of the savoury sort; she spies several Runners and Sins and Sleepers. She is too far gone to care.

She signals for a refill, and wonders who put the room on spin. A brawny man sidles up next her, all swagger and pose, and she immediately pegs him for a puffed-up assassin, even through her alcohol-induced haze. She snorts into her glass, wondering what this Sin would think if she told him she was fucking an Operative.

"Hey, Babydoll," he leers, and his breath carries the strong stench of whisky. "How much for a coupla hours?" She giggles a bit at that, sardonic and cynical and a little broken. She finds herself thinking that it might be more worth it to sleep with someone who pays her for her time. At least, she thinks, she will get something out of it. _He_, she thinks vehemently, mind wandering to tall lanky men in brown overcoats, wants and takes everything from her and leaves her empty.

The Sin hears her giggle and preens, running grimy fingers through thinning hair. Bile rises to the back of her throat, and her fingers on the brandy glass tighten. How low, she muses, has she gotten? Fragments of the day's earlier events drift through her mind, and she knocks back her brandy in an effort to banish them.

"Sorry, buster, I'm not for sale."

He leans in, sending her a lascivious grin and a wink. "Oh, honey, everyone has a price. C'mon, I'll pay you well."

"I'll double whatever he offers." A swift hand yanks the drunk Sin away from her, and the voice from behind is heartbreakingly familiar. It is low and smooth and rich, like caramel and honey, so real that she is sure she can almost reach out and touch it.

The Sin is furious. "Listen, buddy, go pick on someone your own –" He spies this newcomer's expensive suit and silk tie, and blanches a little at the realization that this man isn't some street-level peon. The Doctor raises an eyebrow, and the Sin bows and scrapes as he disappears back into the woodwork.

She turns back to her now-empty glass, tracing the planes and ridges of it with a shaky finger. He settles into the vacated spot next to her, and orders a shot of vodka. She defiantly ignores his pointed stare and disapproving glare when she calls for another round, and swills down half the glass when it arrives.

After a long, long moment – minutes and hours and _years_, she thinks, he opens his mouth to speak. "I heard about the Watchers from Mickey. I'm sorry."

She makes a noise at the back of her throat, part discomfort and part sadness. She doesn't want to talk about it, not now, not here, not with him. This pub on the fringe of respectability had been picked just to avoid him.

"How did you find me?" Sometimes she really hates him, and hates the way he can tie her up in knots and make her question herself and her life without meaning to. Sometimes, she thinks, she hates herself.

"I'll always find you," he replies, and she sees him look down and stare at his shot glass out of the corner of her eye. He picks it up, and the tableau is strangely fascinating; long, tapered fingers wrapped around a fragile, tiny artifact, and she cannot help but feel a little like that shot glass.

"I know," she sighs, and his words are the weight of the world on her thin, wasting shoulders.

He sets the glass down, and the _clink_ it makes on the battered surface of the table is decisive and almost-final. His hand goes up to rub the nape of his neck, and she knows that something is heavy on his mind.

She wants to cry. She could, she thinks, and she could blame it on the alcohol. But she won't, because even if he might believe her excuse, she will know she is a lie, and when this is all over she may never forgive herself.

"You – Why don't you ever come to me?" His question startles her out of her self-recrimination and self-reproach, and she wonders, _why now?_ He has never wanted to _talk_ before, so his sudden query at the worst time possible makes her want to laugh bitterly.

"I had to hear about the Watchers from _Mickey._ Word on the grapevine is that you went to _Jack_ first. I just – Why don't you ever come to me first?" He is not looking at her when he speaks, his eyes trained on the row of neat Champagne bottles lined up behind the bar. His next words are a murmur, soft amidst the din around them. "No walls," he says. "The walls are down."

The walls between them are down, but she knows that there are lines where the walls had once stood, and she is smart enough to know not to cross them, not yet.

"You're never there," she tells him, words butterfly-light and faint as the wisps of smoke in the air. "You're always off saving the world, but you never have the time to save me." He begins to speak, but she shakes her head and presses on. "And I don't need you to, really, I don't. You're not my knight on a white charger, and I'm hardly a distressed damsel."

She stares at her brandy glass, and notes that the edge of it bears a chip. "But you're like this ghost, you know? You leave and arrive when you want to, and I can't ever catch you. It's not that I want to, anyway." He is watching her now, out of the corner of his eye. She pretends not to notice. "But a phantom isn't something you can really believe in. You can't believe in something if it isn't there."

She turns fully now, to face him, to face their problems and their worries and their mistakes and everything that lies in the yawning chasm between them. "And you're not there. You never are."

He takes her hand, traces the lines of her delicate palm with his fingers. "But I'm here. I'm here now."

She sighs, and it ghosts over their entwined hands. "Yes. Yes, you are."

He presses a kiss to the centre of her palm. "Maybe that's all that really matters, in the end."

X-X

They leave the pub at half past three, and dodge the Patrollers and Snits with unerring ease. They slip down darkened streets and stroll along deserted pathways, and his hand never once leaves hers.

The night air is cool, a pleasant chill that sweeps the edges of alcohol from her mind. They pass Trafalgar Square, and a sliver of memory jolts her.

"I saw a magpie." He turns to look at her, and his gaze is mildly amused. She repeats. "One. Just one magpie." He nods, and his mouth quirks upwards a little when he recalls her penchant for superstitions.

She stares at the empty square, where flocks of pigeons gather in the day. "One for sorrow," she says.

He frowns, as if remembering something vague. "Oh, that magpie. The one trapped in the foyer?" She hums her assent.

"I saw it too. So between you and me, that's two magpies."

She laughs a little at his peculiar brand of logic, and starts to shake her head. "That doesn't –"

He cuts her off. "Two magpies," he reasserts. "What's that line again?"

His thumb is stroking her hand. She leans into him, into his real and solid presence.

"Two for joy." His hand squeezes hers lightly.

"Yes, there you go. Two. That's two of us, then." His voice is light and almost teasing, but she knows and feels the strength of the meaning behind the words, hidden and obscured by his flotsam and jetsam of language and half-smiles.

She nods. "Two of us."

He clears his throat, almost awkwardly.

"Good. That's good to know."

X-X

There is a note for her at the Watcher desk when she enters the Agency at half to nine. _Now. Urgent._ It is in Jack's distinct handwriting, a near-illegible scrawl that somehow conveys his arrogance and smirks and flair with several strokes.

He is not in his office, but she is a Watcher, and it does not take her long to find him. He is in the stronghold conference room, along with several others she recognizes. There is a pause in her step when she spies Section Director Harriet Jones.

"Watcher Tyler," the Director greets. "Please, take a seat." She does, and Jack slides a manila file across the table to her. He is quick to add, "Rose, don't misunderstand when you –"

She flips the file open, and her heart freezes in her chest when she sees a glossy photograph of the Doctor and her at their favourite patisserie. She rifles through the file's contents, and comes across numerous other close-up shots of them – him leaving her apartment, her talking to him in the cafeteria, her letting him into her flat. Her blood runs cold.

Her eyes are ablaze when she looks back up at Jack. "How could you?" He opens his mouth to reply, but she has moved on. She rounds on the Director.

"What is the meaning of this?" She jabs a furious finger at the file before her. "This violates all Watcher-Agency agreements. _No one_ watches the Watchers."

The Director steeples her fingers on the table, and watches her with shuttered eyes. "That may be so, but you need us as much as we need you. Sit down, girl, don't be a fool."

Her nails bite into her palms at the Director's casual dismissal of her anger. She sits, and does not look at Jack in the eyes. "Tell me what's going on."

"They tell me you're our best Watcher," the Director begins. "So tell me, Watcher Tyler, what have you heard of Little Red?"

"Suicide." Rose's voice is strong and sure, but she cannot shake off the creeping worry that drifts up her spine. "It's suicide. It's a proposed Agency plan to infiltrate The Government by sending in wiped Watchers, in the hope that one will get close enough to The Master. It's strategically sound, but it can't be done. You can't wipe Watchers without killing them."

The Director watches her with a hooded gaze. _Something is wrong,_ Rose thinks, and her mind darts to glossy photographs in manila folders. "And what if I told you that we found a way?"

"A way?" She frowns, unsure and hesitant and not liking where she thinks this is heading. "A way to wipe the Watchers?" She shakes her head, slow side-to-side movements. "There isn't one. We would know. The Watchers would know."

"Humour me. Say there is a way; what would you do then? Would you be willing to join Little Red? Will you serve your country and –" The Director leans forward, and her next words are low blows. "– save those you _love_?" It is a loaded question, and the answer lodges itself at the back of her throat.

"But there isn't –"

"I'm telling you there is, Rose Tyler. So what say you? How will you respond to our invitation? I'm asking you to join Little Red. What is your answer?"

She swallows hard, and ignores Jack's imploring eyes that beg her for forgiveness.

"I guess that makes me the Bad Wolf, then."

She signs on the dotted line, and feels as if she has signed her life away.


	8. Heartbreak Warfare

__A/N: Thanks to everyone who reviewed, especially Lady X on the Radio for being so awesome! It's a short chapter, though, I couldn't extend it without it swelling to mammoth proportions. I'm totally on a roll here today, guys. And ohmygodpleasedon'tkillme for the last line. All will be revealed in time. Enjoy!

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><p><em>When: Post-Ground Zero<em>

Singapore, she finds, is a wonderful little country, smaller than London and a lovely mix of city and suburb and races of all colours. They wind up here, weeks after Beijing. There are not many places for them to run, he tells her, not when Britannia and Americania are both after them. Eurasia will not back them but will not begrudge them asylum, and Eastasia is a mess of infighting.

Few countries have remained unscathed in the wake of the rise of megapowers. Singapore, along with Norway and Switzerland and Denmark, are among the smattering of independent nations that have carefully kept themselves neutral.

This tiny city-state is crowded and densely populated, and they lose themselves easily in the masses along the shopping district of Orchard Road. The scars of war are not so prominent here, and she feels self-conscious and _wrong_, like she does not belong amongst these innocents.

She wonders at the sheer numbers on the streets, and he informs her that there are no rations or curfews or population cleansings here. It is overwhelming, the freedom these people must have. She cannot remember what freedom tastes like. There are stories of a time before The Government, but no one can really recall what it was like. They tell these stories like myths and legends, fairytales spun to lure children into believing that better days can come again.

She wants to believe these stories, she really does, but the death and destruction and suffering and chaos she has seen are cruel slaps in the face. They are, she reasons, called stories for a reason. Stories are only ever half-truths, or prettied-up lies fed to wanting souls.

It rains later in the night, as the clocks approach twenty-one. They get a room in an obscure backpacker's hostel somewhere in Chinatown, and she stays behind when he leaves to buy their dinner. She watches the rain splatter the grey-black pavement seven teetering floors below, and it makes her feel a little less uncomfortable in this _good_ and _untainted_ country. She presses her palm flat against the window pane, and it is cool and thin and real.

_I need you to explain why you left me._ His words haunt her, and the things she has done but cannot recall dance beyond the grasp of her memory, like fluttering ribbons or wisps of smoke. She dreams on most nights, she knows, more nightmares than anything else, but she can never remember them when she comes gasping-crawling back to consciousness. She wonders what it is that she dreams of, that makes her so terrified. She wonders if she really wants to know.

She doesn't know why he is here, why he is still here. Sometimes, when he takes her hand or trails a caress down the curve of her back, she thinks his touch is so familiar, like the back of her hand or her face in the mirror, but then the feeling is gone, and he is a not-quite-stranger again. There is a persistent feeling that she has, that he will disappear without warning one day, and that she needs him far more than he will ever need her. She doesn't know where these feelings come from.

The queen bed is soft when she settles down on it, and she strokes the cotton sheets under her hands. There are no wrinkles here, not in these sheets. The thought puzzles her. She toes off her shoes and tugs down her jeans, climbing under the covers. Her memory is a circle with too many dead ends, and sleep provides a quiet escape. She thinks of her nightmares, and dismisses them.

If you cannot remember, she thinks, then it cannot hurt you.

She will look back at this and laugh, but the laughter will not be happy.

X-X

She slides out of sleep when she hears the turning of the key in the door. Her skin is clammy with sweat, and her heart is beating much too fast. The claws of nightmares she suffered through slip away, but they leave lacerations in their wake. Her breaths are short. She doesn't sit up, not yet, and she keeps her eyes closed.

It will not be the first time he sees her in a nightmare-induced panicked state, but it doesn't mean she wants him to see her like this anymore than she can help. He is too careful with her, treading around her like a broken bird, or like a fragile porcelain doll. Sometimes she finds herself wishing he would break her a little, just so she can see what's inside.

He enters the room, and she hears him speak in a hushed voice. He is on his comm device, speaking to someone she is sure she once knew. She wishes they had more in common, beyond their constant need for running and their perfecting the art of avoidance.

"Nothing. No, she doesn't remember. Everything. She's forgotten everything." It does not surprise her, not really, to find that he is talking about her. It makes her curious, almost, to learn what he will say. It makes her want to laugh a little. _Nothing. Everything._ The paradoxes confuse her.

"No." She jumps a little at this; his voice is angry and unwavering, biting and cold. She pities whoever it is on the end of the line. "Stay away. You've – you've done more than enough." He runs a weary hand through his tousled hair.

"I don't think she can ever forgive you for that. I know I can't."

She hears him toss the comm device into his duffel bag, and assumes that he must have cut the other side off. The need to know why is almost choking.

She sits up, and he freezes for a split-second before setting the food he had bought back on the tiny table in the corner.

"I got you chicken rice," he says with a smile, but it doesn't quite reach his eyes.

She nods, and pads over to the table. "Who was that, on the line?"

She almost misses his flinch at her question. "You heard that?"

"I did. Who was it?" Something tells her that this knowledge is crucial.

He pauses, and a long moment passes before he answers. "Jack. His name is Jack."

"Jack," she repeats, and she rolls the single syllable around her tongue. She looks up at him, and his eyes are unreadable. "I knew him, before."

He tugs her close to him, and buries his face in her hair. "Not anymore."

She doesn't think she imagines the feel of his pulse racing behind her hands.

X-X

Dreams of blood and death drag her from the depths of sleep at a quarter to four. She is curled into him, palm flat against his heart, legs entwined with his. She does not scream or cry or rail, not this time, but he is awake and aware all the same. She wonders how he does that.

She wonders if he sleeps at all. He closes his eyes and his breath slows down and he stops running for a bit, but she is sure that is not sleep, not really – that is more like forgetting. They are both experts at it.

"Are you alright?" His face is close to hers, and she can see the separate eyelashes that frame the windows to his soul. "Your face is a little red –"

Something he says triggers it, and she finds herself clutching her head as what feels like a thousand marching soldiers run through her mind. Her head is burning, burning like dying suns and little girls and woodcutters and forests-of-carmine, and she distantly hears someone screaming. She thinks it might be her. Images pour into her mind like dozens of shattered mirror shards reflecting a million different things at once, without order or coherence or logic or understanding, and she catches fragments of

_Red – wolf – it's – you'll – perfectly safe – can be restored – rising – oh god – is she going to be – something's wrong – what is – lord no – I'm – blood on her hands, why – sorry – don't let her – bar the – so sorry – deadlock it, she mustn't – this is – kill – canary – he will – find them, you have to – Thames – bad, you are – hurts – he will kill you for this – please don't – why is this – help – you betrayed – help me_

He is shaking her, and she thinks the edge she hears in his voice is panic. Her head is searing, like fire and brands and white-hot knives, and suddenly the scar on her torso is too. He holds her tight against his chest, and his solid presence is the only thing that keeps her tethered to reality amidst the pain and agony that ravages her mind.

It stops, eternities and lifetimes later, and her voice is hoarse when she speaks. "He was there. Jack. Jack was there, when they –"

He tilts her face up to meet his eyes. "When they what?"

She looks away, and stares up at the ceiling above them.

"When they killed me."


	9. House of Wolves

****A/N: Once again, thanks to all you darlings who reviewed! The line that Jack quotes, "Like flies to wanton boys / Are we to the Gods, they kill us for their sport" is taken from Shakespeare's King Lear.

**Written entirely from Jack's POV**.

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><p><em>When: Pre-Ground Zero<em>

Jack is not a nervous man. He is not prone to flights of worry, or fretting or going over things again and again. He is decisive, and when he makes calls, he knows what he wants and how to get it. It is a good asset and a lethal weapon to wield in his position as a Handler, and he knows he uses it well. He is a master chess player, and he plays the game of life like a veteran. In many ways, he is.

But despite all the qualities that Jack knows he possesses, the clenching in his gut tells him that he has just been outmaneuvered by a far better and more experienced player of the game. He has met Section Director Harriet Jones a handful of times before, and the things he has heard said about her set his teeth on edge. _Oh, the Director? She's sharp. Razor-sharp. Harriet Jones? Ambitious, that one is. The lady upstairs? Yeah, she's cunning. Very cunning. _

He knocks on her office door, and enters when a muffled voice tells him to. The controlled order and rigid hierarchy of their world exasperates him. She waves a hand at the chair in front of her desk, and he takes a seat. It is uncomfortable. Her gaze is piercing, the kind that makes you feel like you have been judged, and will be perennially found wanting.

"Handler Harkness. We are both busy people, so I will cut straight to the chase." She leans forward, and he finds himself thinking of Venus flytraps and spider webs and sticky fly paper. "I understand that you oversee Watcher Tyler."

His eyebrows furrow, and his spine straightens a little. "Rose?"

"Yes. Watcher Tyler – Rose Tyler, I believe. What can you tell me about her?"

Something is wrong, he knows, but he cannot put his finger on it. She is too interested, a little too invested in what he has to say. He weighs his words, and tries to find the ones that will say enough but are as little as possible.

"She's the best."

She relaxes in her seat, and leans back. The smile on her face is satisfied. "Excellent. That's wonderful to hear."

It is abrupt, the way she dismisses him after that. It leaves him reeling at their bizarre, unusually peculiar exchange.

He cannot shake the feeling that he has been outplayed and outmatched, and he doesn't like that he has no idea why.

X-X

Later, much later, he will look back at their first meeting in the Director's office, and he will hate himself for how easily he played into her hands.

They are bringing Rose in today, he knows, and his stomach is sickened at the thought. The labs on sub-level nine are quiet for now, the calm before the storm. There are so many questions he has that remain answered, niggling thoughts that plague his waking moments and convinces him that they haven't told him everything.

_Little Red,_ he thinks, and snorts a little. The contents of the file on the project that they passed to him had been laughably brief, consisting of basic programme schematics and general expected outcomes for _the subject._ It cold and impersonal, and he hates it.

He had not wanted any of this to happen. None of this was supposed to happen. The pieces of the puzzle hadn't clicked until he had entered the stronghold conference room scant minutes before Rose. _Background research,_ they had told him when he spotted the glossy photographs they had secreted away like over-zealous paparazzi.

He blames himself for this, for being the recommendation behind Rose's selection to be the sacrificial lamb. _He hadn't known._ The guilt tears him up from inside.

They assure him that the procedure is perfectly safe, that they have circumvented Watcher biology and psychological quirks, that her memory will be fully restored once this assignment is over. Everything in him screams to do something to stop this. He leans against a lab door, and the metal is cool through his shirt. The hallway is empty and white and sterile, like hospitals or morgues or mental asylums, and he wonders which one of the three it really is. Maybe, he thinks, it really is a bit of each.

Deep breaths steady him, and he closes his eyes as he tips his head back to rest it against the door. There will be no forgiving himself for what he has done, even if he hadn't known. You don't throw a knife out a window and act surprised when it kills someone down below.

He hears a hum of voices some distance away, and steels himself for what is to come. He has gone through plan after plan in his mind, searching and seeking ways to save her from this, but none of the measures he has come up with leave both her and the Doctor alive. He knows she would never forgive him, even if he already is unable to forgive himself, if he lets the Doctor die in a bid to save her.

They call her a _volunteer,_ but the armed escorts around remove all semblance of conscious choice. This is no willing participant, he knows, this is a lamb being led to the slaughterhouse, and the butchers that wait are only too happy to slice her up and serve her on a platter. She does not look him in the eye.

They lead her past him, into Laboratory 10. He notes that the key that used to hang around her neck on a delicate silver chain is gone, and his heart breaks a little at what she had to do, what she will do, and what she will continue to do for love. He finds himself wishing that someone would love him that strongly and fiercely and absolutely.

But this part of the story is not his, he knows. He is merely the silent bystander, the traitorous condemner in this horror-tragedy of a play that unfolds before his eyes. She is the lead character who never wanted the part.

He trails after them into the lab, and she remains silent throughout, even as they explain the procedure to her in muted tones. He hates their voices, the mock-soothing, calming-patronising, fake-warm voices that they use, like this is a routine medical checkup, like this is something she had a choice in. He wants to scream and rage. _No,_ he wants to shout, _use me instead._ This is the one time he wishes she isn't so good at what she does, that she is anyone other than Rose Tyler, that she sleeps with anyone other than the Doctor. It is a deadly combination, these three things, and he is the one who has pulled the trigger.

They strap her onto an examination table, and secure her wrists and ankles. Section Director Jones enters the observation room, and he is sure that he does not miss the self-satisfied glint in her eye. He wants to shake her, to convince her to end this madness. But Jack Harkness has always known he was a coward, hidden underneath his bluster and charm, so he does none of those things. Besides, he reasons, and hates himself for doing so, he can watch over Rose and the Doctor better as a Handler. Rose would want that, he tells himself, and ignores the tiny voice that shouts at him to _stop lying._

_Watching a Watcher,_ he thinks, and his smile is brittle and bitter on his face.

He is ushered into the observation room when they inform him that the procedure is going to begin. The room is small, but he is sure that his hatred and fury fills the room well enough. There is only the Director and him here, and he wonders just how under wraps this programme must have been.

They plug Rose into some sort of monitoring device, beeping and whirring and sending them images that only lab rats and scientists like them can comprehend. They slide a needle under the fragile skin of her wrist, and it attaches itself onto her Watcher implant, glowing faintly beneath the surface. There is a brief pause in their activities, and they turn to the Director for the go-ahead.

She nods, and they flick a switch on a panel.

That is when, Jack will reflect later, all hell breaks loose.

X-X

He pays a visit to a not-quite-friend, hours after he leaves the lab. He is black and blue and bruised within an inch of his life. He had tried to stop them, after all. _Jack Harkness, the savior, _he thinks, and snorts derisively.

He raises a tired hand to pound on a beat-up coral blue apartment door, but it is wrenched open before his knuckles can connect with the surface. The Doctor glares at him, eyes ablaze and hurting and livid.

"What is it?" He demands this in a quiet tone, but Jack hears the undertone of rawness and bitterness and lack-of-understanding, and it paints his voice in broken diamond-chips and shattered razor blades and fragments of happily-ever-afters.

He swallows hard, and exhales in a long, long sigh. "Can I come in?" The Doctor pauses for a moment, before moving to allow him entry.

Jack moves to stand by the window. He can't sit, not now. Sitting is resting, and resting is one step closer to sleep, and he doesn't think he will ever sleep again. He doesn't think he can. The windowpane is grimy, and a thick layer of dust rests on the sill. It is a neglected house, but not an unloved one. Rose, he knows, loved it here. He winces at her memory.

"So," The voice from behind him is impatient, as if letting him in was a courtesy move that is a precursor to throwing him out. "What is it, then?"

He forces himself to breathe. "It's Rose." The Doctor stills behind him, and there is a sharp inhale before he speaks. "I don't want to hear it. Look, she left me, alright? So take your –"

"Stop, okay? Just stop. You don't – I can't tell you much, but she did everything for you, so don't you dare write her off like that."

There is a long pause, and Jack can almost feel the temperature in the room drop several degrees. "_You knew?_ She told you she was going to leave me?" The Doctor is furious, so far beyond simple anger and fury that there are no words to describe the depth of emotions he feels. "How long has she been planning this? What, has she gotten bored of me already? Found some new –"

"_Shut up._ You have _no_ idea what you're saying, so I would suggest you just _shut up_ for one moment. Rose _loved –_"

"– oh, so we're using past tense now? Why, she send you here to let me down easy? To –"

"– I can't believe you're so blind, you _selfish bastard._ You're so caught up in your own problems that you don't even –"

"– _me, selfish_? I save the world with my blood and I put my life on the line _every single fucking day_ and –"

" – you save the world, but you never have the time to save her, do you?"

They are both panting now, harsh and abrupt exhales of breath that ring like gunshots and falling mirrors in the silence around them. Jack's fists are clenched at his sides, and he notes that the Doctor's jaw is tight and gritted. It gives him some small satisfaction to see that he is not the only one hurting here.

"Get. Out." The Doctor's words are flat and hard, full of loathing and hate. Jack thinks that it isn't all directed towards him, not really. It assuages his fractured soul a little, to know that the Doctor did care for Rose, even if maybe Rose loved the Doctor more in the end. Jack walks to the front door.

He turns at the doorway. "Do me a favour. Answer one question. Just one."

The Doctor is facing out the window, his expression shrouded by the shadows and dark from outside. Jack takes his silence for consent, and forges ahead, through the haze of hurt and pain and guilt.

"Did you ever tell her?"

The Doctor is silent for drawn-out, wrung-out seconds. "Tell her what?"

"That you Marked her. That you put the Mark out, and that she was yours."

The man silhouetted by the window freezes, and his next words are ice-chips that cut harder and deeper than any knife or blade. "How did you –"

"I knew it," he whispers, and it echoes in the expanse of the room. The man at the doorway departs, leaving behind a broken figure by the window.

X-X

He stops by the safehouse that they had put her in next.

She is lying on the bed; her prone form pale and colourless. She is almost a ghost, and he finds himself wondering if she will slip away. The light blue-green veins running down her arm are stark against the whiteness of her skin, and her breathing is shallow and fast, but she is asleep.

_Not dead,_ he assures himself, and casts his mind back to mere hours before, when they had revived and killed and revived and killed and revived her in their sick attempt to create the perfect Watcher. Her heart had stopped three times, and he could have sworn he had seen the shadow of a scythe hover in the corners and edges of the lab.

_This is an imperfect subject, _the scientists had groused to the Section Director. _Something in her psychological makeup is different. It hinders the wipe process._

He had been too battered and bruised to do anything to stop them by then; the armed escorts had kept him trapped and beaten in the viewing room when he had tried to halt things the minute Rose began to spasm and keen on the table.

_The Mark,_ he now knows. _It was the Mark._ He wonders what the Doctor would say if he knew he was the one who had unintentionally killed her thrice. It is not Jack's place to tell him, but he cannot help but laugh at the bitter, cruel irony of the world. _Like flies to wanton boys,_ he thinks,_ are we to the Gods. They kill us for their sport._

Rose stirs a little, and her eyes flutter open. His breath lodges in his throat.

"Oh, hello," she says, and her voice is soft, hoarse from screaming and crying.

She frowns, as if faintly puzzled.

"I'm sorry, but who are you?"


	10. Fear in a Handful of Dust

****A/N: Thanks to all who reviewed, especially **ArafelSedai, Dreamcatcher49, Lady X on the radio, firewordsparkler** and **jadesei** for your repeated reviews! They make my day, really. Keep 'em coming!

Set chronologically after _Magpies, Ravens and Crows_.

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><p><em><em>

_When:_ _Pre-Ground Zero_

_What is your answer?_

She had said yes, and had given herself away. _A month,_ they tell her. _You have a month._ It is her lifetime condensed into a fleeting second of blink-and-you-miss. The Agency is quiet now, all muted activity and noise as the day winds down. Her heart is numb, and her right hand still feels the echo of the sweeping movement of her cursive signature on distinct dotted lines. _This, _she thinks_, this is the way the world ends._

They have loaded a Secret-Keeper sleeper programme onto her Watcher implant, a Catch-22 to ensure her zipped lips. _For your safety_, they had said. _No,_ she wants to tell them. _For yours._

She will die if she gives voice to the two words _Little Red_, and it doesn't bother her, not really, because her life is a small, small thing, but she knows they will kill him too. This is not what it means to be between the devil and the deep blue sea, this is more than being between a rock and a hard place; this is standing on the edge of all you have ever known, with a gun to your back and a hand around your heart.

The chrome doors that litter the hallways cast her image back at her, and she feels more like a reflection than anything else. When she closes her eyes, she can feel the quiet hum of The Network, the soothing calm of the collective consciousness of hundreds and thousands and millions of Watchers out there. There is no one else here, but she is not alone.

Her emotions are like a tap that has been turned off, or a box of snakes kept under your bed. Her feelings are like shouts, muffled behind glass fifteen inches thick. They are too far removed from her, and she is hollow, like tin men or scarecrows or cowardly lions. There is no yellow brick road, not here, six levels below ground, or anywhere at all. There are, she amends, no roads at all.

She leaves the Agency, and stumbles-falls out onto the pavement of the world outside. The sky is a vivid blue, a veritable swathe of ocean-in-the-air, and the sun's rays stab her too-pale skin. The quiet neighbourhood that hides this continent's most extensive and wanted rebel system is an idyllic place, all neat manicured lawns and tiny windmills that flutter and twirl in silent gardens. She wants to cry, and maybe to laugh. She does neither.

She walks for miles and miles in random directions, slipping down alleys and traversing up lanes as it suits her fancy. There is not much time for things like _free will_ and _conscious thought_ left, so she will take what she can like a dying man at a feast. She ends up somewhere in East London, amidst unfamiliar blocks and people. The banners of The Government drape many a building façade, and she finds herself thinking of curtains and windows, or sheets and corpses.

X-X

He finds her, in the end, as he always does. He sits next to her on a park bench, under the dead branches of an oak tree, ravaged and destroyed, as so many other things had been during The Great War. Like errant children, they are all still being punished for the sins of their fathers. As he always does, he reads her too well, and not at all.

"Are you alright?" He asks, and there are so very many answers to that question that she doesn't know where to begin. It takes a while for her to find a reply, but she does eventually. She always does.

"Why wouldn't I be?" He is not a top Operative for nothing, and he notes the way she subtly-obviously ducks his question. He doesn't want her to feel pressured into telling him anything. She wishes he would ask anyway. He nods, but they both know he is far from convinced. They will not pursue the matter, despite the way it hovers and colours and poisons the air around them.

"How are the Watchers?" _Ten dead,_ she remembers, and upbraids herself for being able to forget.

"We're better. Getting better. The Network is peaceful, at least." She doesn't tell him about the ripple of unease that churns beneath the surface, or the echoes of dying screams that she can pick up on, if she concentrates hard enough. She looks up at him, to where he is lounging on the spot next to her, languid and coiled energy and suppressed danger.

_A month,_ she thinks, and jumps from the pan into the searing fire. "Do you have any long assignments coming up?" He is startled by her question, taken aback by her bold step across a line they have never dared pass before. Topics like _work_ and _feelings_ and _us_ are not subjects they talk about.

He stares at her, hard and searching, like he is trying to figure her out. "No," he replies at length. "Not that I know of."

She swallows, and turns away to look at the grey dust patches that coat the park. There are stories, she recalls, of parks being green and pretty and colourful. But that is not their story. Not now, maybe not ever. "Can you – will you stay with me, at least for the next month?"

The word is on the tip of his tongue. _Why?_ She has never pressed for so much in their relationship before, and the aura of fragility and steel and lost-in-the-woods that surrounds her frightens him a little. _How horrible must it be,_ he thinks_, for something to scare Rose Tyler?_

Every second that passes without a reply tightens the noose of the question that hangs in the air, suspended around them. There are cracks in her heart, she knows, and wonders if this will finally break it. The silence stretches, taut and thick between them both.

He digs a hand into the pocket of his coat, and seems to search for something. He pulls out a gleaming silver key, bright and glinting in the harsh sunlight. He makes to speak, but stops, and she watches him with wondering eyes as he struggles to find the words. It is a rare sight to see him speechless, so she takes the moment with both hands and savours it.

"I had this made for you, some time ago." He holds the key out to her, like a peace offering, or an unspoken promise. She takes it. "It's a key to – to my place. It's yours now." She soaks this in, absorbs the emotions of happiness and joy and overwhelming sadness that threaten to drown and choke her. His unusual ineloquence belies his inner turmoil, and she reaches out for his hand. When he takes it, it is solid and real in hers.

The key rests in her palm, warm from his body and the symbol of everything they are, half-truths and secrets and ghosts locked in glass houses. It is trust and faith and a-feeling-they-cannot-name, siphoned and kept in this tiny, tiny object. It is intricately designed, with looping lines and curling patterns, woven together in a delicate lattice. The design is too ornate, too purposeful to simply be decorative.

"What does it mean?" She traces a finger over the design, trying to burn the metalwork into her memory, before they take it away from her.

"The design?" He is surprised by her question, because he so often forgets that she is a Watcher, and she _knows_ things. He shoves his a hand into a pocket of his slacks and glances away, like a bashful schoolboy or an awkward young love. The other goes up to rub the nape of his neck in a gesture that is so _him,_ so familiar that she wants to hug him and never let go. She nods at his query, and he clears his throat once before answering.

"It's for luck."

She smiles a little at this, wants to tell him that she won't need it, because luck and fortune and favour have already deserted her. She wears an empty chain around her neck, handy for hanging discreet bugging devices or comm links, and she slides the key onto it. The key is a comforting weight between her breasts, a tangible reminder that _there is always now,_ and she drags her mind away from stories-with-no-endings and star-crossed-lovers, because she promises they will not be one of them.

It is, she will realize, much easier to lie to yourself.

X-X

His apartment is battered and worn, a little worse-for-wear and swimming in dust. It is a typical bachelor's pad. She sighs when she sees the neglect and disarray that has befallen the house, and shakes her head at the piles of scrap metal and half-dismembered machinery lying strewn around.

She loves it all. _(She loves him, a tiny voice adds, but she quashes it – she will not go there, not today.)_

He runs an almost-nervous hand through his hair. "It's a little messy, I know, sorry about that. The bedroom's through there, kitchen to your left, and oh, yes, I just realized that we forgot to pick up your stuff from your place. Do you –"

She presses a finger to his lips, smiling slightly, and he locks his gaze on hers as he quiets.

"It's fine. We'll be fine. We always are." He nods, slowly, and wonders at the mysteries and secrets she keeps.

The question leaves his lips before he can stop himself, like sprinters and escaping rabbits and jail-breakers. "How long?"

She pauses, tilting her head, unsure of what he asks. He places his palm against her cheek, and traces the smooth curves and planes of her delicate structure. "How long are you going to stay with me?"

_A month,_ she knows she should tell him, but she is selfish and greedy and so-sadly-human, even if she is a Watcher.

"Forever," she says, and hopes he will believe her.


	11. Slow Dancing in a Burning Room

A/N: As always, a huge, huge thank you to all who reviewed! This chapter is written entirely from **the Doctor's POV**.

Warnings: Language and smut! ahead. Rating has been changed in accordance with chapter content.

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><p><em>When: Post-Ground Zero<em>

She takes his breath away, with her broken-sad smiles and quiet presence. He remembers that she never used to speak so little and used to laugh more, and he cannot help but feel guilty at the comparisons he draws between her and herself, even if they are the same person. She is warm next to him, here and real and solid-tangible. Some days, he wakes up wondering if this is all a dream; if this is another one of his subconscious manifestations of her presence, like the ghost of her he often dreamt up after she had left.

But her words are a blow to his gut, and her clammy skin and shallow breaths against him convince him that she is _here_, that this is no dream, that this is oh-so-painful reality. There are so many pieces of the puzzle that he doesn't have, pieces that will allow him to _understand_, but they are kept from him like jealous lovers.

It is not her fault, he understands well, but it doesn't stop him from wanting to shake and rail at her and _how could she forget him?_ The anger and bitterness that he feels is dulled and blunted with time, but it is still there, and it throbs like a beating, bleeding heart.

_When they killed me._

This is another puzzle piece, but he doesn't know where it fits in the grand scheme. _Jack_, he thinks, and the resentment that bubbles in his mind is fresh and cutting. This is envy and jealousy and green-eyed monsters, he knows, but it is heartbreaking that she remembers Jack and not _him_. He would like to think he meant more to her than Jack ever did. Years of bottled cynicism and tampered fury at her strain to break free, and it surprises him. He thought he had put those ghosts to rest a long time ago, when he had _(never)_ accepted that she wouldn't return.

He had given her everything and it hadn't been enough, and he wants so badly to take it all back, but he can't because it's still _her,_ and she is the one he has always lo –

_(He will not go there, not today.)_

He doesn't know what to say. What words are adequate enough, when someone has just told you that they died? The clues he has gathered had pointed to some terrible, unspeakable horror, but this is the demon that feeds on all others. The going is slow, and there are too many things he doesn't know. _Miss Scarlet in the Billiard Room with the Candlestick?_ It is not a game, but he sometimes feels that is all life really is.

The kiss he presses to the top of her head is fleeting, more to reassure himself that she is real than anything else.

"Shh," he tells her, and keeps her close to his side. "It's alright. We'll be alright. It's over now," he says, but is it really? The past is possessive and consuming, and it doesn't easily let its travellers go. They, who play with life and deal with the devil, can never leave it all behind.

She shudders beside him, against him, and her breathing is ragged. He closes his eyes, and wishes their life were simple. He dismisses the thought easily; no, no, this is what made them what they are, this is what made them fit together like two broken halves of a mirror.

"What else do you remember?" He asks, and the hope that rises within him is insidious and creeping.

She tenses against him. "Nothing," she says, and it crushes but does not kill the hope that flutters-dies in his chest, like pinned butterflies, or birds-in-a-cage. He nods, and knows she can feel the movement.

"I didn't – All I saw was flashes. Fragments of my memory, I think. And pain." She swallows, and it is audible in the darkness and silence. "There was so much pain. I don't know why." She burrows more firmly into him, and he holds her tighter. "All I know is that I had to do it, because if I didn't – if I – something bad would happen, and it broke my heart to think of that."

She inhales, and the shift in the air around them ghosts across his arms and bare chest. "And death. I remember Jack, and death."

X-X

He calls Jack later, when she has slipped back into fitful and restless sleep. Their conversation is not an easy one, and they both bristle and sneer and scorn the other. Rose is the only thing that has forced them to keep in contact.

"You _bastard._ Tell me, _Harkness,_ where were you the day Rose _died?_" There is a sharp intake of breath on the end of the line.

"What – what does she remember?"

"That you were there when they murdered her. Harkness, I swear to God, if you had anything to do with this fucked-up situation, I will kill you."

There is a hollow laugh. "Oh, I don't doubt that. Harriet Jones was your work, right? They still haven't found all of her, you know."

"I gave her a chance, and she didn't take it."

"Yes, yes, how could anyone forget? _The Doctor, killer-with-a-conscience extraordinaire_. No second chances." Jack's voice is faintly mocking.

He smiles, hard and brittle and flinty, though he knows Jack cannot see him. "That's what I said, before she died."

There is silence now, for long, long moments, like weighty measures or blood-on-the-scales, before Jack sighs. "Let me see Rose. I need to speak to her."

He wants to say no so badly, to keep Rose all to himself for just a little bit more, but he knows she needs this. They all do. He has never been good at sharing, but then again he was never very good at lov – _caring_, either. But he will learn, just for her.

"We're at the hostel off New Bridge Road, behind the department store near Clemenceau Road. Be here in an hour."

He hangs up, and buries his face in his hands.

X-X

There is a knock on the door, exactly fifty-nine minutes and twenty-two seconds later. He finishes cleaning his Glock, and slides it comfortably into the holster at his waist. He answers the door.

Jack is older now, a great deal wearier and more tired, and the lines on his face are so much more pronounced. "Doctor," he greets, and does not receive a reply.

He walks over to the bed, pressing a kiss to Rose's forehead as he gently nudges her awake. Jack is silhouetted at the doorway, like his personal savior or demon come to wreck havoc in his world. She stirs drowsily, and he slides an arm around her shoulders as she sits up. Her hair is messy, so he raises a hand and tucks several hanging strands behind her ear.

The message is clear: _she is mine._

Her gaze is bleary and tired, but it focuses quickly once she notices the figure at the door. Her hand that rests in his tightens, and her knuckles turn white.

"You're Jack," she says, and it shatters his heart into pieces that she never recognized him like this, with certainty and surety and confidence in her voice. He tries to bite down the bitterness that rises in his throat, but the truth is glaring and obvious.

"Rose, God, I can't believe –" Jack is nervous, jumpy and unsure. He paces the room, liked a caged predator or trapped soul. "I'm sorry. I'm so, so, so sorry."

She pauses. "I don't know what you're sorry for," she whispers, and looks down at her hand, entwined with the Doctor's. He strokes a thumb over hers. "But I know that you can tell me. So please," she says, and her voice is urgent and imploring. "Please help me."

Jack freezes, and the Doctor wonders what it is that can keep Jack tied up and bound and caught, like prey in a spider's web.

"I can't." He rakes a frustrated hand through his hair. "Don't you think I would've come for you by now, if I could? It isn't – It would kill you." He turns to the window, but it is not the skyscrapers and apartment buildings of Singapore that he sees. "Again."

Rose is shaking her head, like a frightened child kept in a nightmare, disbelieving and bewildered. The Doctor gathers her close to him, and she buries her face against his chest.

"I should – I should go." The Doctor nods. Jack makes to leave, but stops just as he is exiting. "Doctor, a word?"

He disengages himself from Rose, and pads out into the hallway. He is loath to leave her, but there are things that need to be said.

"What is it?"

Jack does not meet his eyes. "There are two words that you should never say in front of Rose. I don't know how this works, not exactly, but it might kill her. It's a failsafe they implanted when – when the shit hit the fan. Two words. _Little Red._"

_Your face is a little red – _

Everything is clearer and not. He wants to hit something, to vent his fury and frustration and anger and bitterness, but he chokes it all back down like he always has. Jack leans against the wall outside the room, and slides to sit on the floor, knees bent and arms at his sides.

Jack's voice is quiet when he speaks. "Don't you ever get tired of this?"

He does not hesitate to reply. "Only everyday."

Jack chuckles, but it is not mirthful; it is jagged and hoarse and fractured dreams, like serrated knives and rusty blades.

"What's one thing you remember of her, back from – from before?" Jack's question is personal, but they know each other too well and are perfect strangers enough to talk like this, and so he will answer, even if they do not like one another.

"She keeps walking away," he murmurs, and where the thought came from puzzles him.

The words hang in the expanse of the hallway, like headlines and billboards and blank sheets of paper.

"That's funny," comes Jack's reply. "I remember her always chasing after you."

"Wrong direction," he sighs at length, and wonders just who he is trying to convince.

X-X

When he returns to her, he finds her sitting on the bed, staring out the window. It is something he notices she does a great deal, and he wishes she would tell him what specters and phantoms she sees.

He wants to ask her so many things, but he knows she will not have the answers. He stands next to where she sits, and she reaches out for him. He steps into her embrace, and she buries her face into the planes of his stomach. His fingers are light on her hair, running through the thin silken strands so much like spun gold, and he thinks of Rapunzel in a tower or Rumpelstiltskin. It is funny, he thinks, how their names all begin with the same letter.

He is surprised when her hands turn forceful on his front, and he is tugged down next to her on the bed. Her lips crash onto his, branding and searing and _god he's missed it so much,_ and she slips her hands under his shirt. He knows this is wrong, that this is no solution, but he is like a drowning man, and this is his lifeline. He flips them over, and tugs his shirt off.

"We shouldn't –" He has to try, even if he knows he will fail. She silences him with her mouth, and he doesn't mind losing, not to her. She is soft and willing and pliant and warm beneath his roaming hands, moaning and gasping as he removes the layers that separate them and trails exploring fingers over the geography of her body. Some part of him still cannot believe that this is real, and tells him that this is a fantasy, a figment of his imagination that he had satisfied himself with many times before, only to find his soiled hands after he is spent, panting and yearning for her touch.

Her questing hands slip into his boxers and close around him, and the spark of pleasure and intensity that sears him convinces him that this is reality. He tugs his boxers off, and her hand is light and smooth and pumping on him and he groans as he parts her thighs with his hands to find her wet and dripping and _all for him._ He slides a finger into her, and the squeak she makes is just as he remembered, breathy and gasping and oh-so-arousing.

Her hand is still on his member, insistent and hot, and he nudges it away with reluctance. He wants to draw this out, to savour this moment with every fibre of his being. He moves his slicked fingers _in, out, in, out,_ of her, setting a punishing pace that pushes her off the edge of the precipice into an orgasm that has her jerking and trembling. He slides his fingers out of her and licks the traces of her off them, and her hooded eyes follow his actions.

He takes his time, spreading her out before him and brushing his wandering hands over the peaks and dips of her, relearning and rememorizing the landscape of her figure. He wants this night to last forever, and damns himself for being only a man. He would have given her eternities and lifetimes of pleasure, if he could. If she would let him. He dispels the thought from his mind as her tiny moans and sighs become louder and more insistent, and when he finally, finally slides into her waiting warmth, it is like coming home.

He moves slowly within her, languorous and ghosting, soaking in her heat and slickness, and grits his teeth and throws his head back when she clenches and tightens around him like a hot fist. Her nails score his back and arms as she pleads him for _faster_ and _more,_ and he gives it to her, thrusting and pumping with more force and speed, because he has never been able to deny her anything. His mouth feasts on the tender flesh of her breasts, and his hands caress the nape of her neck, or the expanse of her stomach, or the long scar that splits her torso.

When she comes apart in his arms, it is white heat and black holes and fireworks and everything he has missed for three years, and he follows after her down the path of pleasure-pain and oblivion with a shout. His last thought before his climax overtakes him is that he hopes he has buried himself deep enough into her, so deep that she will never be able to get him out.

Later, they lie cooled in the aftermath of their spent passion, and the humid wind flutters the curtains at the windows. He lies on his back, trying to count the cracks on the ceiling, and she is draped over him on her front. Her fingers trace constellations and maps and patterns over his torso, looping and curling again and again.

There is a symbol she keeps redrawing, on the patch of skin right above his belly button. It takes him a while to notice it, and his breath catches painfully when he does.

She trails a curving figure eight, over and over, an infinity symbol that she invisibly tattoos onto his skin and heart.

_Forever,_ he thinks. _You lied._


	12. Folie a Deux

A/N: Major sources of inspiration for this chapter include _Sonnet VI_ and _Clenched Soul_, both poems by Pablo Neruda. Thanks to all my lovelies who reviewed! Especially to ArafelSedal, who compared my work to some amazing authors and made me squee.

Set some time after _Slow Dancing in a Burning Room_, but not by a substantial amount.

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><p><em>When: Post-Ground Zero<em>

"Can you feel The Network?" He asks one night, when they are both drowsy and sated and far enough from their monsters to pause and take a breath. She is surprised, because they have avoided all talk of _Watchers_ or _The Government_ so far.

The presence of thousands of Watchers is a faint hum at the back of her mind, and she reaches for it for comfort before answering. "Yes. Yes, I can. I always can."

"What is it like?" It is not a question anyone has ever asked her before, and she has to pause, rolling the question around her tongue and thoughts.

"Life. It's like life, and wisdom, and the knowledge of the world and beyond at your fingertips. It's like the information of lifetimes on a silver platter, waiting for you to reach out and feast on it. It's like a map and a maze, and shifting labyrinths and straight roads, and it's wonderful and mad and terrifying at once, because you can never know it all."

"And you can see it? You can see it all?" He traces drawings only he can see onto the blank canvas of her back, and she arches a little into his touch.

"Not – I – not all of it. It was something they couldn't explain, when I joined The Government." She presses a kiss to the curve of his shoulder, and her breath is shuddering when she exhales. "I was _faulty_, they said. They never knew why. _He_ took great interest in me, because of it. The first Watcher who couldn't watch it all. _He_ found it funny. _Poetic justice_, he said." He tenses at her mention of _him_, his brother-and-enemy, and she brushes light fingers against his jaw. He relaxes, slowly.

"But there are whispers," she continues. "Whispers of an Operative who left, several years ago. And _they_ made it like he never existed at all. Wiped every record of him from every system." She pauses, and the tension in his body is like a coiled spring. "That's you, isn't it? Whoever it was you worked for – _they_ did that." He doesn't answer, but it tells her everything she needs to know.

"What was it like, being an Operative?" He sighs a little, and some tension dissipates.

His voice is faintly bemused when he replies. "You're the Watcher, why don't you tell me?"

She shakes her head, and several strands of loose hair tickle his neck. "You know I can't."

"Oh?" He answers, and she can hear the amusement in his tone. She huffs a little at this.

"The Operatives were the only class who ever successfully managed to construct a system beyond the gaze of the Watchers. Not as elaborate as The Network, but enough to keep things they wanted buried hidden well away from sight. We never knew why, though. Why the Operatives would want to do that. Everyone knows that the Watchers are force-neutral."

"Maybe," he begins, and his voice is quiet, so soft that it is almost like the sigh of the wind, or the voice of the rain crying. "Maybe the Operatives were just protecting those they loved."

She is puzzled, and maybe a little frightened of horrors-in-a-cage. "From what?"

"From themselves."

His reply steals the breath from her lungs, like a thief in the night, or a searing knife.

X-X

They pick the conversation up days later, as they slip onto a trans-continental train bound for Americania. Their carriage is deserted, and there is a faint sense of déjà vu.

She sits next to him, pressed up against his side, his arm slung over her shoulders. They are not safe, not by a long stretch, but this is a rare moment of calm between the heart-stopping, breath-wrenching running that they do. The scenery outside the windows changes but stays constant, swathes and lifetimes of oceans as the train glides along the massive tracks that rise out of the water, like gods showing them the way, or vultures circling carrion.

"What do you remember?" He asks. "Now. When you look back and think about your past, what do you remember?"

She is hesitant to answer, because it will give life to the lies that she hasn't lived. Her memories of her past are not truths, but that doesn't mean it wasn't – isn't – real for her. "London – Britannia. I grew up in Britannia, in the Powell Estates with my mother. My father was a salesman, and he died when I was little. He used to sell torchwood, my mum said. Whatever that was. I had a friend – Mickey. Mickey Smith. We grew up together, running around all over the place. I fell once, and got that scar on my torso. When I turned nineteen, I was discovered by Henrik, the guy who ran the local branch of The Government. They said I was a Watcher, and transferred me to The Government permanently when I turned twenty-two."

He chuckles, broken and flinty and ground-diamond-dust. "POWELL. Torchwood. Mickey. Oh, they're good."

She swallows. "I know it – none of it – is real, now. Can you – will you tell me? What my past really is?"

He takes her hand in his, rubbing smooth circles onto the back. "Do you want me to? Do you want to hear about the history of a stranger from me?"

Her hand in his closes into a fist, and he has to gently pry it open. "No. No, you're right. I don't." This, she knows, is something that she has to do herself, the rediscovery of juvenilia and childhood and damaged toys and ripped dolls.

There is a long moment of silence, each of them lost in the mausoleum of their own thoughts.

"The first thing we learn in Watcher training," she begins, "is a poem. Every Watcher knows this. The Oracle, we call it. The Watcher's Oracle."

"_The Watchers stand, along the wall_

_From land to ocean, they see all_

_The Runners afoot, down below_

_The Watchers watch, and they know._

_The Sins, blood dripping from their hands_

_The Snits, unraveling best-laid plans_

_The Sleepers, waiting for their time_

_The Handlers, snapping, keeping all in line._

_And among all these, the Watchers see_

_All things offered, given and free."_

He nods. "I've heard of something like that, but never the full version."

She hums in assent. "You're the first non-Watcher who has heard it fully. It was told to us, to reminds us that everyone has a place, and that we guard that." She pauses. "But the whispers, they – they've always said there was _more_. Something even the Watchers couldn't see. Something that the Watchers were missing, but that everyone knew."

His hand strokes her hair lightly, playing with the strands, almost distractedly. "_But The System lies beyond their reach/The Operatives keep the breach_." He exhales. "That's the last two lines, after the Oracle. The Operative's Diptych."

"I've never –"

"You wouldn't have. We keep it beyond the sight of the Watchers, in The System. For everyone but the Watchers."

Realisation dawns in her mind, like crashing waves and breaking tsunamis. "The Hierarchy. That's why the Operatives are so high up in the Hierarchy. We – the Watchers never knew why. We couldn't see."

He turns away, to look out the window at the ash-grey sky and endless-finite blue.

"It was never meant for your eyes."

X-X

Later, the sleeper carriage they occupy is empty, and the two single beds look lonely and battered, tired and overused. They share a single mattress; curled up into each other like lost children or rejected souls.

Déjà vu is a feeling they know well, like the creeping iciness that steals warmth from their skin. "What is it like?" She asks, and this is a conversation they have had before, but is completely new. "The System. What is it like?"

His different reply reminds her that this is not the world-on-a-loop, that this is reality-that-splinters. "It's not really like anything. There isn't a feeling – we're not connected so strongly to it, like you are to The Network."

She frowns. "It's not a part of you," she surmises. His heart is a solid thumping under her hand, beating and working and counting down. _To what?_ She wonders, and doesn't really want to know the answer.

He nods. "It's not. The Watchers are part of The Network – in many ways, it _is_ you. But The System –"

"It's like a machine, something you access when you have to," she finishes for him. It is all so new to her, these things-she-knows-but-doesn't. It frightens her, that there are so many things that sift through her fingers, like pixie dust or crushed bones.

"Yes." He does not elaborate, and she does not ask for more, not now.

X-X

When the sky is light again, spilling from inky black into streaking, over-hanging grey, she takes another step forward down the bramble-filled, debris-strewn path they have started on.

"Why?" She asks. "Why create The System? What is the purpose?"

"A warning," he says. "A message. A Mark." He rests against the pillows, hand curled around her waist as she sits and stares at the emptiness around them. "To protect," he continues. "To toe the fine line between life and death, and to keep those we care about on one side of it. On the _right_ side of it."

"Alive, you mean." He makes a noise at the back of his throat, and she takes it for agreement, although she thinks it sound like a cry for help, or a plea for forgiveness.

"As far as possible."

"And does it work?" The look he gives her is all-consuming, a box-of-secrets and a Gordian knot.

"Are you alive?" He asks, and the question is confusing, almost odd and too close to home all at once.

She takes a deep breath as his words sink in, like the Titanic, or the Lusitania, or a folded paper boat. "I am," she replies. "I think I am."

He breaks her gaze, and stares at the empty bed on the other side of the train carriage. The emptiness is cold, and all-too-familiar, like an old friend, or the ghost of a dead enemy.

"Then yes," he breathes out. "Yes, it works."


	13. The Secret Life of Daydreams

A/N: Major influences for this chapter include Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone De Beauvoir, because I had to read them for class. Thanks to all my lovely reviewers!

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><p><em>When: Post-Ground Zero<em>

When her eyes flicker open on the morning of their third day in Americania, the air is cool and still around them, like last breaths and graveyard chills. He lies curled behind her, against her, his heartbeat reassuring against her back. His arm is around her waist, like a tether, or a lifeline.

She savours moments like this, when she can share his unguarded presence, when he is tainted-innocent, screaming-peaceful. He is an extraordinarily light sleeper, and so he stirs when she turns in his arms to press her cheek against his chest. The _thump-thump_ of his heart is real and tangible, a reminder that the only ghosts they have are the ones that they imagine.

He nuzzles her hair as he stumbles, blearily and drowsily, into wakefulness. The noise he makes at the back of his throat is indecipherable, but she takes it as an unspoken question. The stubble on his jaw catches in her hair, and is rough and abrading beneath her fingers.

"I dreamt," she begins, sighing out the words, like the weight of the world in two fragile syllables, "I dreamt that you broke my heart."

He jerks into instant alertness, a switch so quick it is like flashes-in-a-pan or embers from fires far below. His intake of breath is sharp, searing-stabbing her consciousness. "I couldn't have," he says. "Not when it was never mine to break."

She sits up, and slides out from his embrace to pad to the tiny window of the safehouse. The alley down below is squalid and filthy, and several days' worth of rubbish is strewn about, ten heart-dropping floors away. It is messy and cluttered and haphazard, and she finds remarkable parallels between herself and it.

"But it hurt," she whispers, and the words are almost lost in the engulfing silence. "It hurt so much." There is a rustle of sheets behind her, and she sees him sit up on the bed from the corner of her eye. "I loved you, I think," she continues, and the tension from his body is palpable.

She turns to face him, because the question that rests on the tip of her tongue compels her to. "Did I ever say those words – before? Back then, did I ever tell you that I lo –"

"You did." He cuts her off, and it is like shutting a door to a dozen exits, or sealing a lost pathway. He throws off the covers, and heads for the bathroom.

She is so tired, so tired of his non-answers and blurred-mirrors-of-words. She calls out after him. "And what did you say to that?"

The snap of the bathroom door closing is finite and echoing, like gunshots that leave no trace, or cuts that never heal.

X-X

They have both long perfected the art of avoidance and running, but she really thinks he is much better than her at it. The morning's conversation is never mentioned, never hinted at, and she wonders if he can see the hairline cracks that spider-web over her aching-damaged heart.

When they disembark from the train, her hand slips into his so easily that it is almost subconscious, and it makes her wonder if anything he can do would ever make her hate him. _No,_ she thinks. _No._ She does not know the reason, and she does not want to think of one, not now.

"Why Americania?" She asks, because the din in the station around them is too quiet.

He hesitates, and she briefly wonders if he will swerve the question again, but he doesn't, and so the pressure-pain in her heart lessens a little. "The TARDIS initiative," he murmurs, and she almost fails to catch it. "TARDIS being –"

"The Treaty Agreement of Reconvened Dissenting Independent States," she finishes, and the flickers of _laughter_ and _run_ and _I only take the best_ hover within her reach for a brief moment, like wisps of smoke in rushing air. The fragments are lost before she finds them, like bread crumbs on forest floors.

The look his gives her is unfathomable, dark and deep and piercing, and she really thinks he means to say more, but he turns to glance in the opposite direction. She wishes she could know if they have taken steps forward or backward, but she doesn't even know where they are going, and so she cannot be the judge. A long moment passes, but he nods in the end.

She wonders why she keeps pushing, and thinks about corpses being given peace. "But the TARDIS initiative is active in Eurasia as well, so why didn't we stay there?"

"GALLIFREY," he elaborates, and she tries to access The Network for this, but it is blocked to her. Some things have always been blocked to her, she thinks, and fractures a little at the thought that he is one of those things. "The General Alliance of Localised Liaisons In the Free Reconvened Economy. That's Americania. They're the main signatory. I was part of the TARDIS initiative, so we can claim amnesty."

"And," he sighs, and his breath coalesces in the cold around them, like nightmares and bogeymen brought to life. "There's someone I want you to meet."

She is like Pandora, and she cannot resist, even though she knows that there are reasons why some boxes should never be opened, or why some lines should never be crossed. "Who?"

The crowd at the station exit is crushing, pushing-shoving on their way out. He tugs her closer to his side, and his warmth is like a sea she tries to bottle. His lips are soft against her ear, and his breath is vaguely ticklish when he speaks.

"Mickey Smith," he tells her, and she is sure that her heart stops for a brief second.

X-X

She tugs his sleeve, like a lost child or a stumbling infant. "Mickey isn't –"

They are on a lonely road now, away from the bustling masses of the New York Trans-Continental Train Terminal. The air is still, and there is a quiet stirring in the streets. He turns towards her, eyes blazing and fists clenched, and she thinks _oh, oh, this is what it means to push too far._

"Mickey is _here_, in New York, alright? He's a _Watcher_, like you, and he went to the Academy with you. He's not your childhood buddy you ran around playgrounds with, and he's _not_ your first love, got that? Everything you think you know is a _lie._ So _wake up._ Everything you know _isn't real. _Just – just _stop._"

His frustration and anger and hurt is tangible and present, like bitter pills that are hard to swallow, or medicine that no one wants to eat. His words are like crushing barbs, flaying and tearing the skin of her heart and emotions. There is a burning at the back of her eyes, tears that flash hot and searing.

"Maybe," she whispers-gasps. "But they were real to me."

"Just because you think they were real doesn't make it the truth." She wonders why they are doing this _now,_ why _here_, and why they cannot talk of anything that matters without it descending into a Pyrrhic victory on either side. His words are almost-cruel, harsh and ruthless, and she thinks that this is the side of him that made him such a good Operative. This is the shadow that skirts around the edges of light, the hell-behind-heaven. It frightens her, that she understands it so well. _That_, she amends, _she understands him so well._

"When I look back, I remember Mickey. And I remember that I loved him. A puppy, juvenile, childish love maybe – but it was still _love_ on some small level, and the memory was – is – real for me."

He is silent, for a long moment, drawn out into eternities and lifetimes. He is quiet, like muffled screams or the soundlessness of death.

"So if you can't remember, that makes it a lie." The lilt at the end of his sentence turns it into an almost-question, but his words are more of a statement that anything else. His hands are fisted in the pockets of his slacks, and he stands a scant distance away from her. She thinks they have never been further apart.

She shakes her head. "Not a lie. A – a half-truth."

"A half-truth is nothing but a half-lie." He looks at her, and his eyes are sad and tired, and full of things-only-he-remembers. "You can't believe in something if it isn't there." He sighs, and his breath is a puff of wispy smoke in the wintry night. "And half-truths-lies aren't there, not really."

She opens her mouth to speak, but doesn't know what to say. Words, she knows, are not enough. They are never enough. She inhales, and makes to speak, but he cuts her off.

"We have move on."

She wonders if he is talking about the street ahead of them where they have stopped, or if he sees something completely different in the looping, obscured pathway of his mind. She reaches out, and tugs his hand out from his pocket. It slips easily into hers.

"Yes," she agrees. "We do."

X-X

They walk for hours, along snaking roads and hidden lanes, ending up on the outskirts of the city centre. The buzz of the night is a faint hum in the background, a cacophony that reminds them that they are not alone. They are never alone, she knows, but that does not mean they are not isolated. They are many paths to tread, and they have instead lost themselves in the darkness of the wood, unseeing and unseen, out of reach of any track or direction or help, and maybe, just maybe, they don't even want to be found.

He speaks first this time, and it startles her a little. "If you cannot remember," he begins, and his voice ghosts over the still air, like monsters they cannot see, or spirits that must be laid to rest. "Does that mean it never happened?" She wonders why he wants so many answers tonight, and why he seeks absolution for things that are not her place to forgive.

She does not reply, because she does not know the answer. _Maybe_, she finds herself thinking, _maybe there isn't one_.

He swallows, and she watches his Adam's apple bob, like the pull of a grenade pin, or the shifting of a life buoy in the desolate ocean.

"And if so," he continues, "if so – then what does that make us?"

His eyes are hard on hers, almost-pleading and infinitely sad.

"And," he sighs, "Did you love me at all?"

_Yes,_ she wants to tell him. _Yes._ But his _(her)_ words haunt her, like shattered shards of past lives. The silence is loud.

_(You can't believe in something if it isn't there.)_


	14. Another Way to Die

A/N: Set chronologically after Fear in a Handful of Dust. A major source of inspiration was Fowles's _The French Lieutenant's Woman_. A thousand hugs to all my lovely reviewers!

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><p>When: Pre-Ground Zero<p>

It is frightening, almost, they way they slip so easily into a shared life. The mornings are warm and comforting, a soothing lull, so very different from the frenzy of their days. Though she hardly ever wakes next to him, the smell of him lingers on the sheets and in the air around her, and it cushions her from the monsters that wait in the not-quite-distance, like a balm to a wound, or a soaking-bloody bandage.

She does not think of the way the ground beneath her feet is crumbling like the _walls of_ _Jericho_, or how friends and enemies bring her to her knees. She has one month, and she will not waste it thinking. Thinking will lead to heartbreak and nightmares and ghosts-in-the-dark, and she has enough of those to last her lifetimes. She will not apologise for being selfish, not when she has given herself up in exchange.

Their days are spent together, on the beat-up sofa in his apartment, whiling away the hours with warm cups of black market tea, talking and laughing and skirting around issues. She watches him over the cover of the books she pretends to read, trying to burn the image of him, grease-stained and rumpled, onto the fragile canvas of her memory. He does not question the way she slows and urges him to slow the pace of their lovemaking, drawing out sensations and unsaid emotions and moments into long lines in time. He does not ask her why she avoids the Agency, and he does not ask her why there are twenty-four missed calls from Jack on her comm device.

_(Later, he will think that he was subconsciously afraid of her answers, even then.)_

But this is now, and she will seize the days that trickle-rush by. She cooks for him, and he does the dishes, and when she does the laundry, he will fold the washed clothes. This is the life she knows they could have had, had they been anyone but themselves. She has never been ungrateful for what they have, but she finds herself wishing, more and more, that a life of simplicity and domesticity and straight-lines-not-circles is theirs.

The pendulum of the clock swings, and it has no mercy for those that attempt to stop it, least of all her. It does not mean she will not try anyway.

X-X

She walks the avenues and lanes of London when he leaves for short assignments, when she can pretend that she is like any other person on the street. Winter edges in slowly, subtle hands that strip the sunlight from their world and casts the skies in perennial grey. _It is,_ she thinks, _fitting._ The birds that once flew overhead, calling and sounding, have fallen silent.

She wanders onto London's Oxford Street, the shopping haven of the masses. The crowds are thin today, with the cold keeping them at bay. She stands at a cross-junction, waiting for the traffic officer to signal. The air is dry and biting, like a breath of fresh air, or the acrid smell of smoke and fire. She stands shoulder-to-shoulder with several others as they wait, and she wonders what they feel. She breathes and thinks and hopes and dreams like any of them, but she doesn't _feel_, not really.

It is like she is trapped in a bubble, and knows that the pop is inevitable. It is like waiting for the other shoe to drop, or for the funeral dirge to begin playing.

She slips off onto a tiny lane full of eclectic shops hawking mysterious wares, and she enters one on impulse. The shop is dim and faintly musty, reminiscent of old libraries or abandoned museums. _Ood's Emporium_, the shambling sign behind a dusty counter reads, and she trails a curious hand along the yellowing glass of a display case.

The light tinkling of bells has her looking up, and a greying elderly man with a scraggly beard beams down at her. He gestures for her to come closer to observe the menagerie of paraphernalia, and she does, because she has nothing left to lose.

He folds his hands on the glass case, and looks at her with ancient eyes. "What, my dear, are you looking for?"

"A gift," she says, and wonders what compels her to respond. "A present. A memory, for someone I –" There is no more time for regrets or non-action, and the words slide off her tongue easily, a not-so-secret given life. "For someone I love."

"Ah," he replies, and meanders over to an adjacent counter. He draws the syllable out, like a delicacy to be savoured, or a truth he keeps. "Something special for him, then. You should get him something he doesn't have."

She thinks of his self-sufficiency, his solitary lifestyle and lonely apartment, and finds herself at a loss. "But he has everything," she tells him, and he shakes his head at her, almost in disappointment.

"No one has everything," he gently chides, and makes a broad gesture. "You will find something here," he says, and she smiles faintly at his certainty.

The shop is filled with quirky bric-a-brac, oilskin umbrellas and clock hands and combs with no teeth. She wanders over to a wooden display case in the far corner of the room, and finds that it is littered with old books and mismatched cufflinks and dried-out fountain pens. She turns to leave, to tell the shopkeeper that he is wrong, but a glint catches her eye, and she is drawn to a flash of silver, half-buried beneath the remains of discarded pieces of the lives of strangers.

She has to dig a little, but she emerges with an ornately carved silver fob watch, weighty and solid in her palm. The surface is overrun with looping and curling detail, intricate and complex and beautiful, and _this,_ she thinks. _This._

There is a sound behind her, and she turns to find the shopkeeper smiling benevolently. She shows him the watch she cradles in her hands, like the baby she can never have, or the promises she cannot keep.

"This," she tells the elderly man. "This." She pauses, and traces the patterns of the watch with shaky fingers. Her voice is tremulous when she continues.

"I want to give him time."

X-X

She takes the watch to a metalsmith, and asks to have it engraved. The interior of the watch cover is smooth and unlined, and she wonders if she really wants her inadequate words to taint such perfection. Despite her conflicting thoughts, she hands over a fiver for the engraving.

The metalsmith asks her what she wants written, and so very many words sift through her mind, like ashes or fairy dust. "John 'Theta' Smith," she tells him, and he nods in acknowledgement. She makes it to the doorway of the workshop before she caves, and turns back to the metalsmith.

"Wait," she says, and the word echoes in the vastness of the space. "I want to add another line."

He gestures impatiently, and the words catch in her throat before she tugs them out. "One for sorrow, Two for joy – Forever." He does not comment on her unusual request, but frowns at the mention of _forever._

"Are you sure –"

"Please," she tells him. "Just do it."

She tries to convince herself that the words are not like scars on unblemished skin.

X-X

A month is thirty days, or seven hundred and twenty hours, or forty-three thousand and two hundred minutes. A month is a blink of an eye.

He is not there when she wakes on her last day as herself, and she finds her heart aching at that, even as she knows it is for the better. The pale skin on her flesh is bruised lightly in several places, the result of the passionate, urgent frenzy of the night before, and she traces the marks on her body with careful fingers. It breaks her heart to know that his marks on her will fade, and she thinks that her marks on him have already begun to.

_I love you,_ she had told him, when they were languid and cooled in the aftermath. His hand that had been drawing lazy patterns on the plane of her stomach had stilled for a scant second, and his breath had hitched ever so slightly. He had sent her a jaunty and arrogant smile, and _quite right too,_ he told her.

The forced, glossed-over defensive reflex that are his words tell them both that he has managed to fool no one, but he had sealed her mouth with a soul-branding kiss, and time had been too short for her to dwell on what he would _(will)_ not give her. The bite mark on her neck is the result of his hiding-in-a-fortress, and the hallmark of his escape act. _It is fine,_ she will try to persuade herself, spinning lies that all that matters to her is that he knows, but the three-word, eight-letter reply that hangs unsaid will haunt her long after.

_Bring nothing_, the brief message she had received the day before reads. She tries to reassure herself that she is alright with that, that this is not killing her slowly, that the things she treasures most are kept close to her heart, like secrets and things-she-will-not-forget. She tells herself many things, none of which she believes.

She dresses slowly, methodically, carefully, like priests preserving a dead body. The mirror in the bathroom has fogged, and she cannot see herself clearly. It hardly matters now.

A scrap of paper lies on the coffee table, a shredded remnant of the blueprints for a new contraption he is tinkering with. It is crumpled and worn, slightly stained and old. She picks it up, and runs it through her fingers, going over and over the wrinkled lines. She promises herself that she will not cry.

A pen is easily found, scattered amidst the junkyard that is his _(their)_ living room. It is half-chewed from his bouts of frenetic brainstorming and detailing, and the ink flows black.

_Run._

She pens the word with infinite care and none at all, and tells herself that tears do not cause the pressure behind her eyes. The pen whispers across the crinkled paper, looping in an R, curving in a U, rising and falling in an N, and the sound of it is like a cracked bell, or a torn heart.

She knows that he will not doubt her message, and survival is her parting gift to him. They will come after him regardless, she knows, and is aware that they are both existing on borrowed time. But she has borrowed all she can, mortgaged her soul and bartered her life, and now it is up to him. She has done everything she can think of, and she cannot do more.

The clock chimes twelve, a pleasant-sad pealing that echoes throughout the empty house, like a farewell song, or a wordless eulogy. She has to leave. She has to leave _now_, or she never will.

The door handle is cold and unforgiving under her hand, like recriminating bystanders that whisper-yell _traitor, traitor, traitor._ It lingers in her mind, bitter and hard.

She opens the door.

Behind her, a cold key lies plangent on the table, next to a _Dear John_ that contains neither of those words.

The sunlight burns her skin.


	15. The Sharpest Lives

A/N: Set chronologically after House of Wolves. This chapter is particularly dark, especially with one hell of a BAMF!Doctor. I really wanted to explore the darkness and violence that always hovers around his character, so hopefully I managed to do it adequately and well here. Do let me know! In any case, thanks again to all who reviewed, you guys are awesome!

Influences include Battlestar Galactica, a song from My Chemical Romance with the same title, and _Kings and Queens_ by 30 Seconds to Mars.

Occurs in **split-POVs** (Rose and the Doctor), which both take place simultaneously.

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><p><em>When: Pre-Ground Zero (post-Little Red)<em>

She runs now, like the hounds of hell are snapping at her heels. The ceiling is crumbling, dropping dust and debris and chunks of plaster, and the floor shakes from the force of the explosions. Her assignment is complete. Their voices are loud in her ear, tinny and slightly muffled through the earpiece.

"What's with the din?" They ask, demanding and insistent and commanding. "Watcher, status report."

She does not respond. She dashes through falling rooms like a ghost escaping a burning house, or a blind man running. Dust coats her hair and face, masking the streaks of blood that stain her cheek.

"Watcher, what do you hear?"

She stops, and places her hand on the handle of the exit. The walls are buckling around her. She looks at the collapsing warehouse, and watches the way the sunlight filters through the cracks in the roof, and the way the staircases bend and twist. It is like her own fairytale world, drenched in the cloying sickness of her sins. _London Bridge is falling down,_ she thinks, and her smile is bitter-sad.

"I repeat – Watcher, _what do you hear?_"

The explosions rock the ground beneath her, and falling debris hits the floor, over and over and again and again, like a broken-drumming symphony that only she listens to. She opens her palm, holding it out a little, and wonders at the way the brown-red dust trickles onto it, like bleeding wounds or red strings of fate.

She looks up, and looks at this shattering world.

"Nothing," she tells them. "Nothing but the rain."

X-X

The asphalt is slick and cold under the soles of his battered sneakers, and his Glock is a solid weight in his coat. The air is cool and sharp, like knives in cotton pockets, or fingers on chapped lips. Pain is a pressure on his heart, a drawn-out ache that echoes in the emptiness of his soul. It has been eight months, and an abandoned key sears him through the fabric of his pocket where he keeps-guards it.

It is a reminder of foolishness and naïveté and false hopes, he tells himself, and ignores the stirrings of hurt and heartache and doubt. The key is kept together with a note, a three-letter affair, like a stunted epitaph. He nears the entrance of the Agency, a shadow darker than the rest.

It is not hard for him to slip in, bypassing access codes and overriding lockdown protocols. He is, after all, the best at what he does, even if what he does is murder and killing and destroying. This is the name of the game, and he merely plays with the hand he is dealt.

The hallways are deserted at this late hour, long and straight and utterly silent, like graveyard paths with doors that lead to places unknown. He steals into the expanse of the quiet cafeteria, where so many things began, and does not glance at the empty table at the far left of the room, where a girl with sad eyes and a small smile and _this is John Smith_ wait in the archives of his memory.

He travels eight sub-levels down, to the administrative offices of the highest brass, and it is like a crypt, or the carcass of a giant beast. His footfalls resonate as he journeys down the corridors, ringing-bouncing off the walls and ready-or-not-here-I-come.

A sliver of light shines through the crack at the bottom of a door ten feet away. It mocks him, almost, his personal demon, a light in the dark that illuminates nothing. _Section Director Harriet Jones,_ a gleaming plaque proclaims. Behind this door is a path from which there is no return, a descent into a world so depraved that he has only ever dared to dip his toes into it. _She_ isn't here to stop him, and he slides further and further down the road of recklessness and lack-of-control. He _almost_ stops, _almost_ turns back, but bridges have been burned, and the only way to go is forward, even if he does not like the destination.

It is not that, though – he knows he will like what happens next, and it scares him that the thought of revenge and vengeance and settling scores calls out to him so viscerally. But his thoughts dash to notes on cold tables and lonely houses, and the anger that bubbles is overwhelming.

He opens the door.

The road to hell, he thinks, is an amazingly short one.

X-X

"Congratulations on your promotion, Watcher Tyler."

The accolades and titles-to-her-name trail behind her, like sneering schoolchildren. _Watcher, First-Rank._ Her rapid rise through The Government has been tracked by curious and invested eyes, judging and weighing and gossip-whispering. The ranks and titles are burdens she carries on her thin shoulders, along with the weight of the world.

The Government's headquarters is housed in a monolithic chrome building, rising from the ground like a defiant tombstone. It is stark and soulless and emotionless and cold, and she hates it, but there is little that she can do. All the world is a stage, are they are all merely players. The playing board is a rigged one, and there are only Kings and Queens and Pawns.

The insignia of her new rank is pinned onto her coat, a gold lapel pin that glints like the eyes of monsters in the dark. It burns her. The paperwork is filed, and the appropriate forms are submitted; their lives documented and recorded and followed every step of the way.

"Report to Level Eighty-Nine," the Watcher administrator tells her. The next phase of her life waits, eighty-nine teetering, sky-piercing floors away. She does not look forward to it.

The journey upwards is fast, the lift speeding-soaring-killing, like bullets in a barrel. Level Eighty-Nine, everyone knows, is where The Government's Power is, tightly held in the fists of faceless and nameless men. _Eighty-nine levels up,_ she thinks, and wonders why she feels like she should really be heading down, into places like _sub-levels_ and _cafeterias-under-ground_. It is a feeling she cannot fully shake, no matter how hard she tries.

The lift doors slide open noiselessly, and the room she steps into is blinding-searing bright. Sunlight floods through the floor-length windows on all sides, bathing the space in a yellow glow that is almost holy. It is not, she knows, and the floor is silent, like only the dead can truly be.

"Sit," a voice calls from the far right, and the face of this stranger is obscured by the shadow the light casts. The word is hard and clipped, spoken by a man The Network has nothing on. It scares her, but she sits anyway.

He turns a little, and his profile is harshly lighted; slick and cruelly handsome and icily ruthless, the Devil in human form. When she fists her hands in her lap, she tells herself it is not out of fear and trepidation.

"So I hear you're my new Watcher," he continues, and the words cut as it slides across her skin, slicing her into a thousand tiny pieces. "How _delightful._" He leans forward; resting his elbows on the glass table before them, steepling his fingers. "Tell me, Watcher, what is your name?"

She cannot explain why she doesn't want to tell him, why the three syllables of her name have to be yanked out. "Rose," she tells him. "Rose Tyler."

"Mmm, Rose," he says, drawing the syllable out like it is a treat to be tasted slowly, or the head of an insect to be bitten off. He smiles at her across the table, and it is chilling and vicious.

"You can call me _The Master."_

All the world is a stage, but she never wanted to play.

X-X

The Director is not surprised to see him. He should be disappointed, he thinks, but revels in the thought that she had known her day of reckoning was coming. She should have known from the start that _Ro –_ that _she_ was off-limits. It had made things very simple, once he had found out Director Jones had been behind all this. There are no forces on earth that can stop him now.

She had tried to fight him, and he sneers at the memory of her pitiful attempt. He sits on the edge of her desk now, waiting for her to wake from when he had knocked her out. Blood stains the corner of her mouth, and the morbid-bloody red fascinates him. Even monsters, he realizes, bleed red, and wonders just who the monster in this room truly is. He will not dwell on the thought, not now.

Not when there are more important things to do. The Director blinks blearily back to wakefulness, and her moan is hurting when she strains against the bonds that lash her to her ergonomic, calf-leather, imported swivel chair. When her eyes focus on the figure perched before her, her face goes white, and he is amused when he internally compares her to corpses-pale-as-snow, and ash-white bones. _She is not dead_, he thinks. _Not yet_.

He will enjoy this.

He cleans his Glock methodically, carefully, purposefully, and her eyes track his movement, like cornered prey waiting to die. The anger that flames through him is destructive and violent and virulent, and he cannot be bothered to stop it. Rose is out there, _somewhere,_ and it tears him up inside. Months of research and legwork have led him to Director Jones, the orchestrator of this sad little play that no one knows is unfolding, least of all Rose.

"Director Jones," he begins, and cannot stop the satisfaction that courses through his veins when she shudders. "How nice to meet you again." He begins assembling his Glock, the slow _click, click_ of parts sliding back into place loud in the spartan room. "I see you didn't take the chance that I gave you." He sighs, and it is mocking. "I thought it would've been an easy decision for you to make – return Rose, and no one dies. It's such a shame to see that you're an utter fool."

His fingers drum a rhythm on her oak desk even as he works on his gun, like soldiers marching, or an _Auld Lang Syne_ they both hear. "Rose always said that I should give people second chances, but then again, she isn't here, is she?" The fear in her eyes is oh-so-tangible.

"You know what they tell us on the first day of Operative training?" His question is abrupt and sudden, and she flinches. He revels in her fear, and when he thinks of the fear that Rose must have suffered, he wants to make Harriet Jones's last for eternities.

He leans forward, and his voice is mock-conspiratory. "Kings and Queens," he says. "They tell us that we are the Kings and Queens of promise." The gun is complete, and he turns it about, this way and that in his hand, admiring the way the polish gleams in the sterile light.

"And now –" He inhales sharply, and thinks that if Rose were here, she would stop him at this point. But she isn't, and her presence is only ever in his mind. "Now, we're nothing but the victims of ourselves." He reaches into his pocket, and pulls out a silencer. He attaches it slowly, and his eyes are unforgiving on hers. He yanks off her gag, and her breath is shaky.

"You are not God," she spits at him. "You do not get to judge any of us."

"Maybe," he says, as if deep in thought, as if he is not about to crush her life with his hand. "But I do know one thing. You cannot play God and then wash your hands off the things you've created." He taps his Glock on his palm, almost philosophical. "Sooner or later, the day comes when you can't run from the things that you've done."

He presses the barrel of his gun to her temple, and leans in to whisper in her ear. "They tell me that you scattered her thoughts and memories and life, like useless, meaningless trash that you left out on the road." The distinctive _snick_ of the gun safety being flicked off echoes, bouncing off the walls.

"How about I scatter your body like you scattered Rose, hmm?"

_(Hell is empty, and all the devils are here)_


	16. Wayward Soldier

****  
>AN: Follows chronologically after _The Secret Life of Daydreams_. Major influences include, strangely, Grey's Anatomy. Don't ask how - it just did, and it still puzzles me. Thanks to everyone who reviewed!

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><p><em>When: Post-Ground Zero<em>

Mickey looks the same, the boy-she-grew-up-with and her-youthful-first-love-but-not. It is so hard not to run into his arms and ensconce him in a choking hug. He is the same, but is completely different.

She wants to ask him if he remembers the little chippy they used to frequent, on the corner of Sloane Street, or the playground where she fell and cut herself, or the fancy place they had visited when The Government had recruited her. She knows he does not have these memories, so she will not ask, because even if she knows, the words will make the lies-she-has-lived real.

And what does it mean to be _real?_ She isn't the one who can answer that question.

"Rose," Mickey says, and his voice is breathless, like he cannot believe his eyes, like she is a shimmering mirage of mental delusions. The Doctor's presence is solid and comforting and confusing behind her, and she is confronted by the spectres of two pasts, none of which she has really lived.

"God, I –" Mickey pauses, taking several steadying breaths. "He found you," he continues, and the words are laden with meanings-behind-curtains and statements-she-cannot-qualify. "I couldn't believe it when they said you were gone. The – the Watchtower cried. _The Valiant Child is lost,_ the Network said. _The Valiant Child is dead, dead, dead again._"

He walks forward to grip her forearms, and the pressure of his hands almost hurts. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the Doctor's eyes flash with something she cannot _(dare not)_ put a name to. "What happened?" Mickey asks. "Tell me."

She opens her mouth to speak, but no words come out. The Doctor loops an arm around her waist, pulling her out of Mickey's grasp and closer to himself. She buries her face in his chest, and inhales his comforting scent, the smell of collapsing worlds and breaking fishbowls-of-reality.

When she finally speaks, the words are so soft it is almost inaudible.

"I don't know," she says. "Help me. Please." Her hands fist on the lapels of the Doctor's coat, knuckles white.

"I died," she tells Mickey, and his breath hitches and spurts, eyes widening in horror-fear. "And I need to know why."

X-X

Mickey directs her to a chair in his lab, and her eyes skitter and jump as they trace his movements, watching him pull up various monitors and needles and wires. She cannot explain why it makes her feels so uneasy, and the number ten keeps flashing through her mind, like strobe lights that hurt her eyes. _Ten, ten, ten._ It is a song on loop, and not one that she cares to listen to.

"Look," he explains, holding up a needle attached to a wire. "We'll need to put you under for this, in order to circumvent your block with the Network. I can't begin to help you with your memories if we don't even know why the Network's cutting you off, so we'll have to solve that first." The Doctor's hand is warm and soothing as it rubs circles on her back, and she nods.

"Right," he continues. "I'll be giving you a dose of general anesthesia, which should knock you out for a good couple of hours." He slips a mask attached to a tube over her face. "Count to ten for me."

The blackness engulfs her before she makes it to six.

X-X

His eyes never leave the faintly glowing chip that rests just under the surface of the skin on Rose's wrist, like a trapped firefly, or an ember from hell. Mickey is focused on the monitors spread out before them, chewing his lip and making vague, indecipherable noises of curiosity or interest as he pulls up new readings.

They are so close, so near the precipice that hangs over the edge of everything they have ever been and known, and he wonders if he wants to fall. The drop is far, and he doesn't know what will happen once they tumble over the cliff. He wonders if they will even survive it.

Mickey has been staring at a particular screen for the past four minutes and twenty-three seconds. His face is pale in the light of the monitors, fists clenched on the console. The Doctor watches him, and trepidation is so thick that he can taste it, bitter-vile at the back of his throat. Mickey stumbles over to a chair, and buries his face in his hands when he sits. Fear is a choking ball in his throat.

"What is it?" He asks Mickey. "What did you find?"

Mickey stutters a little, tripping and falling over the words as it tumbles out. "I – I can't – She – They wiped her, and I – I didn't _realize_, god, I mean – I knew they wiped her, but how could they –" His eyes are scared and frightened and horrified when they meet his. Mickey swallows, and tries again. "When you told me that she was wiped, I didn't realize that it was so complete. I thought it was partial – it's not unheard of for a Watcher to be fractionally wiped, sometimes for their safety – but they took _everything._ They gave her a new life, a new history, a new memory."

He sighs, and it is shaky. "A few years ago, there was news, all along the Watchtower. Bad news. The Watchers were screaming. There were ten of us, dead. We call them the Ten Dead. No one ever knew why. The Network didn't know. Doesn't know, still. And it scared us all, because if we didn't know, then who did? And if they could do it without us knowing, then who watches the Watchers? Who _can_ watch the Watchers?" He glances over at Rose, eyes jittery.

"Post-mortem autopsies showed that the Watchers were murdered through their link to the Network. Someone had attempted to take them offline for a bit, tried to wipe them. They weren't successful – the Network doesn't allow such complete disconnections, not for the Watchers. So when the Watchers were taken offline, the Network shorted on them, and they – they died. Their implants and brains were fried." He takes shuddery breaths, jerky and short. "It was horrific. I don't –"

Mickey looks up at the Doctor, his eyes sad and lost. "I don't know how Rose survived." Mickey turns away, to stare unseeingly at the plethora of screens. "Maybe – maybe it would have been better if she had died. I can't even begin to imagine what she must have gone through. I don't know who could live through that. Who _should_ live through that."

X-X

The new scans need half an hour to complete, so they both wait in silence, lost in the haze of their own thoughts, fighting-dying with their ghosts. The quiet is loud, and the air is still. The room reminds him of morgues, or isolation cells, or mausoleums. This room is like many others he has been in, empty and soulless and lacking, but it is better and worse because she is here, and _they are so close._ He can feel lost memories and fragments-of-the-past brushing his fingertips and ghosting over his skin.

"Tell me about the Ten Dead," he asks Mickey. "Tell me what happened." He needs to know, because it cuts so close to home, because _she_ would want to know.

"I told you, earlier – all ten were fried." Mickey is skittish, nervous jerky movements betraying his unease.

The Doctor shakes his head, unconvinced. "No. No, there has to be more. They had a breakthrough. They succeeded, and that's –" He swallows hard, and can almost taste blood. "That's why we're here."

Mickey's fingers drum a jumpy rhythm on the desk surface, a _tap-taptap-taptap-tap_ that reminds him vaguely of machine guns and spent bullet shells hitting the ground. "The tenth, he was…" Mickey jumps to his feet, and his pacing is agitated. "When the tenth Watcher died, the whole Network heard his screams. It was different. Worse. Far, far worse. Somehow, he hadn't been completely cut from the Network, and it was – it was _sick._ They think he lived for a bit, after they did that to him, but you can be damned sure he wished he had died."

The Doctor is cleaning his Glock, checking and rechecking the magazine, reloading and polishing and assembling. He looks up when Mickey stops, and the glint in his eyes is unfathomable, like the rivers of the Styx or the waters of the Black Sea. His eyes are stone cold, hard like granite and cutting like diamonds.

Mickey looks at him, at this avenging angel or this wayward soldier, and wonders at the cruelty of the world. "What happened?" He asks the Doctor, because this man has been broken and shattered and fractured and put back together haphazardly and not at all ever since he last saw him, and no one should ever have to be so damaged. "What happened to you after she left?"

When the Doctor smiles, it is sardonic and cynical and everything else in-between. "Life," he says, and goes back to cleaning his gun.

Mickey nods, and silently agrees that it was the best answer.

X-X

The monitor beeps, a chirping-pealing rhythm that bursts like gunfire and flash into the noiseless room. Mickey heads for the consoles immediately, calling up the new scans and sifting through the information with frantic-frenetic eyes, cast white-green-red from the glow of the screens, like a Christmas tree that celebrates nothing. When he turns back to the Doctor, his face is bloodless, drained and pale and shaking. He gulps down fear like a crackwhore given a fix.

The Doctor is up like a shot, striding over to him and giving him a hard shake. "Don't you dare go into a panic attack. What is it?"

The eyes he looks into are not that of a man; they are lost-broken-terrified, like that of a refugee or tortured soul. "Did you –" Mickey pauses, tries to calm his breathing, tries to focus on the _in, out, in, out_ of normal breath. "Did you put the Mark on her?"

Knuckles whiten on the tabletop, and he takes it for a yes. "How do you even –"

He cuts the Doctor off. "I've left the Agency, and I've no ties to the Government. I may be a Watcher, but I know all about the System. I can't see or access it, but I know it's there. Just tell me one thing: Did you know?"

The Doctor frowns, the tilt of his head quizzical. "Know what?"

"That you would kill her three times."

The silence that follows is deafening.

X-X

Death had knocked three times on her door, like an errant child that refused to accept no. It went and came back and left and returned, like a zealous lover that couldn't take refusal. He had been the one to send it there. The guilt and pain and horror at what he has done overwhelms him, like asphyxiating waves, over and over again, real and clawing and oh-so-hurting.

Mickey merely hands him several paper towels when he throws up.

The scans are still running; the last in the series that they will do today. This one will give them more information on the nature of her wipe, which will hopefully allow them to reverse it. He finds bile rising to the back of his throat again, and a small part of him wishes that she will not remember, that she _cannot_ remember, because then she will know what he has done, and she will forgive him, and he cannot have that. He does not deserve forgiveness, much less from her, and he _knows_ she will give it.

Mickey places a comforting hand on his shoulder, and it is heavy and weighty, like the combined weight of all his sins. "Did you love her?" He asks, and the question grinds his mind to a heart-stopping halt.

The question hangs in the air between them, invisible and tangible and very-much-there, and it screams at him, like demons-that-drove-her-away and cowardice-he-never-shows. It scares him so much. The words once said are out there _forever_, and they are parts of him, parts he cannot take back, parts he is afraid he will not _want_ to take back. The strength of what he feels for her has always terrified him, keeps him running in the opposite direction, but perennially darting back for more because he can't stay away for long, not from her.

Three years is a long time to come to terms with your fears and ghosts-that-plague. It is not nearly enough.

"I – I did. I do. Love her, I mean." They tumble out, one after the other, and somewhere, another wall crumbles to dust. It is so much easier to give voice to these words when she is not around to hear them, and he is furious at himself for his cowardice. But he has always been a bit of a coward, he knows, and running is in his blood.

'Good – that's good." Mickey inhales sharply, a dagger-edged breath that slices and cuts them both. The new readings have come in. When he speaks next, his words are paper-thin and rock-hard, like mortar shells and live ammunition.

"Because you saved her life. Thrice. Even if it means that you also killed her."

The Doctor stills, like a predator about to strike, or a storm about to break. His words are whispered, carried softly-loudly throughout the expanse of the room.

"I don't know which is worse."

Mickey says nothing, because there is nothing to be said. His silence says everything.

_(Hell is a real place, full of people he knows. Hell, he thinks, is where they are.)_


	17. The Ghosts of Christmas

__A/N: An **outtake from the series**, as a Christmas special. Merry Christmas to all my lovely readers and reviewers! Have a great one!

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><p><em>Past<em>

When she exits the Agency compound at twenty o'clock, he is waiting for her. He is leaning against the pretty wooden fence that borders the adjacent suburban housing lot, backed by flowers and errant leaves that poke through the slats. She does not see him, not immediately, and he watches her from his shadowed perch.

She sighs, and he watches the way her breath forms and curls around her, white tendrils that snake and smoke through the chilly night air. She has had a long day, a grueling debrief following the end of a painstakingly lengthy mission that had concluded the day before. She is exhausted, and the world around her looks drearier and sadder because of it. The night is so very grey.

He does not know why he is here, not really. _Join me for dinner?_ He doesn't quite know how to phrase it. _Fancy getting a bite?_ The words stick in his throat, and he, who talks-so-much-but-says-nothing, acknowledges the irony. He has seen her around the Agency, darting down corridors and springing up hallways, young and fresh and beautiful, always ready with a smile and a laugh. He sees her, and sees all these things, but he does not miss the way her smile fades too fast, and the way her laugh is entirely brittle. She fascinates him.

The assignment that she has just completed had been a massive one, a complex operation that had spanned weeks and involved dozens of Operatives and Watchers. He had been on the mission, and she had been his Watcher. He observes people, and likes to think he is able to tell the difference between the fake-smiles she gives everyone and the genuine laughter that had pealed over his headset when they had talked and joked and bantered in the lulls between danger and running.

She makes him feel hopeful and optimistic and alive again, and he misses all of those things. He makes her feel needed and intelligent and crucial and important and all those things Watchers are so often overlooked as, and she savours the way his low baritone chuckle warms her inside, and the way they can talk for hours about nothing and everything.

She wears a swinging pink babydoll dress, and he thinks she looks like a princess-from-tales-forgotten, or like a girl-who-deserves-more-than-him. He is in his standard pinstriped suit, tall and lean and jaunty-sombre, and she believes him to be a veritable hero who hardly thinks he is one. They fit together like two broken halves of a mirror.

They make each other _feel_, and it terrifies them both, because their world is chaos and fire and destruction, and this is no place for the softness and emotions of lovers.

He goes up to her anyway, creeping up behind and startling her with a tiny _boo_ to her ear. She jumps a little, and her hand slips beneath her coat to grasp the handle of her Beretta, and he places a reassuring hand on hers. He does not want to get shot tonight, not if he can help it. She berates him for his juvenile behaviour, and he sends her a boyish, charming grin that he knows turns the ladies to mush all-too-well.

She rolls her eyes at him, and stalks off into the night. He blinks, stunned for several seconds, before following her. He has yet to learn that whatever he has come to expect from others, he should never expect from Rose Tyler. He has yet to realize how vital and how important she will come to be to him. He has yet to realize that he will love her.

He has yet to realize all of those things, but he dashes after her anyway, because he knows that she is special. He will tell her things he has never told anyone, things like how he hates pears and thinks he is too skinny, and it may not be the most important things to tell a person, but they make him who he is, and he wants _(needs)_ her to know.

It starts to snow, tiny white flecks raining down on them, turning their bleak world into a winter wonderland of white, even if only for a while. It is not until he catches up to her that he realizes that it is Christmas.

X-X

_Present_

The world outside the lab is black. The night is inky and the purest obsidian, an eternal swathe of black that coats the streets below in darkness. Mickey has left for the night, and will return in the morning. He is here, sitting next to her, watching the _rise, fall, rise, fall_ motions of her breath.

The picture is becoming clearer now, a horrific tableau that is slowly coming together. Words like _Little Red_ and _wipe_ and _the Master_ dance along the fringes of his thought, and they paint a picture of pain and fear and torture. They ring in his mind, like dire warnings, or broken reminders.

He _loves_ her, and the thought of it terrifies him, almost makes him jump up and run as fast as he can, away from her and away from everything that she still makes him feel. He doesn't, though. He sits next to her, a solitary figure in the otherwise empty lab, keeping silent vigil next to the prone, sleeping body of _the woman he loves._

He doesn't know why she had joined Little Red, or why she left him so abruptly, and the things he doesn't know cut tiny holes into his heart. _I love you,_ she had told him the night before she left, and his heart had almost stopped-or-burst-with-joy. It had made him want to say those three little words back, and it had made him want to disentangle himself from her and escape into the night. It hurts, that she had told him she loved him and disappeared the day after.

She is so, so pale against the white of the sheets on the gurney she is lying on. It almost makes her seem like a mirage, or a ghost, corporeal and ephemeral, transient and not-real. He holds her hand, just to reassure himself that she is _here_. His fingers trace unseeing patterns over the redness of her wrist where her Watcher implant is embedded, and he presses a light kiss to the centre of her palm.

He misses her _so much,_ and all he wants is for her to _remember him._

_You never know the value of what you have until you lose it,_ he had read in a book a long time before. He had scoffed at the words, thinking it a fool's saying; he, who was _(is)_ brilliant, the best Operative by far, would never fall into such an amateur trap. The words had haunted him long after she had left, words that echoed and ghosted around the newfound loneliness of his bachelor's pad, sinking into the places where she had once been.

Emptiness had been a new feeling for him, because you can never know you were empty until after you know what it's like to have everything.

He had always known that she was there, waiting and constant, a port-in-a-storm. She had been his cornerstone, something that he could come back to, even with blood dripping from his hands and empty cartridges in his Glock. She hadn't been everything to him, not when he had lived so long without her, but she had been vital and important and _necessary_, and when she had gone, it was worse than losing everything, because everything hadn't mattered.

But she had, and he never told her. She was always there, but he never realized that he was never there for her. She was a touchstone to him, while he was a wisp of smoke that came and left with the wind. He could hold on to her, but she could only ever hold on to the memory of him and his visits. She was necessary to him, a balm to the wound that was _(is)_ his life, and he only ever made her feel used.

He had taken and taken from her until she had nearly nothing left, and when she had wanted something in return, _three little words,_ he couldn't – wouldn't – give it to her. His selfishness and fear are demons that eat him from the inside everyday now, wraiths that will haunt him for periods long after she forgives him. _There is,_ she will tell him, _nothing to forgive,_ and he will break a little at her unconditional, amazing capacity to love a man as broken as he is.

He does not deserve her, he knows. She deserves someone who isn't afraid to give her everything she wants and deserves to have – a beautiful house with a white picket fence, two-point-five kids and a family dog. She deserves _more than him._

But he has always been a little selfish, along with his penchant for cowardice and running, so he will keep her for himself a while longer, just to bask in her love and warmth, and to allow himself to be convinced that he is worth saving, even if deep down he knows he is not.

His love and her love are not the same; his is a poor exchange for hers, and he does not deserve someone as inherently _good_ as she is. He is here to watch over her, to keep her safe where he had failed to once before. He is here for answers, to find out why she left, because even if _he knows_ she deserves someone better, he needs to know what it was that could make her say she loved him and leave the day after.

When she is better, and when he has his answers, he will –

He does not want to think about that, not now. It has begun to snow outside, white flakes that bathe their world in white.

It is Christmas.

X-X

_Future_

They are in London again, and everything is different and the same. The smog of the city is arid and harsh, a cutting smell that sears their senses. It is night, and the city is so very alive.

They spot Runners and Sins and Sleepers out of the corners of their eyes, darting and dashing about, glancing this way and that. The Network and the System are abuzz. _They have returned._ The Watchtower is awake.

His hand is in hers, a solid weight that is thrilling and heady and comforting all at once. They stroll along the crowded pavement just off West End, surrounded by people and life. He stops outside the fogged-up glass display of a chippy, and turns to smile jauntily and rakishly down at her. She beams back.

"Remember our first date?" He gestures towards the chippy, and she playfully rolls her eyes at him. "Come on, I'm starving," he continues, and it is almost a whine, one that she has never been able to resist or refuse.

She tugs him towards the entrance of the shop.

"Only if you're paying," she sends over her shoulder. The smile he shoots back at her is beatific, a grin so warm and large that it could light up the city. They place their orders, and she gets extra-large chips with oodles of salt and sauce, and he gets onion rings, just to buck the trend a little.

Outside, it begins to snow, and in the distance, Big Ben chimes.

It is Christmas, years later, and they are together.

They don't know what perfection is, but if you had asked them there and then, they would have told you that this was it.


	18. Devastation and Reform

****A/N: Hope everyone had a great Christmas! Chapter title from a song by Relient K with the same name. A line the Doctor uses, "...cry havoc...and let slip the dogs of war" is taken from Julius Caesar, by William Shakespeare. Thanks to everyone who reviewed!

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><p><em>When: Post-Ground Zero<em>

X-X__

_Something is interfering with her link to the Network. We need to restart the subject._

_Check the readings. Is she offline? What do you – we need her offline to initiate the wipe. Try again. Cut the life support._

_The subject's vitals are failing; we can only do this once more. Ready the programme. Restarting subject in three – two – one –_

X-X

Mickey returns at a quarter past nine, and finds the Doctor slumped on a chair, head resting on his forearms on the bed as he sleeps. Rose is awake, sitting up under the covers, hand lightly playing with the Doctor's hair. It is a moment almost too private for him to intrude, and he finds himself backing out of the lab before he stops, shakes his head, and reenters. There are things that have to be said and done.

Rose looks up at his entrance, and places a finger to her lips in indication that they should remain silent, or speak softly. He nods.

"So what did you find?" He pauses at her question, and is unsure how he should answer. She presses on. "Why is my connection to the Network faulty?" She takes in Mickey, biting his lower lip, and takes in his darting eyes, and her breath hitches violently. "Tell me. What did you find? _I need to know_."

Maybe she should take this slow. Maybe, she thinks, she should ease into the subject. Maybe she should let them break it to her slowly, because some part of her knows that the things that hang-just-out-of-reach are terrifying and horrifying and devastating. But when you fall from such dizzying heights, and the ground rushes up to meet you so very fast, what use are precautions?

"You died," he tells-whispers to her, and this is not something new, but it makes her heart falter all the same. "Three times."

Three, she knows, is the magic number, the holy triumvirate. Three is the number of times she was murdered, the number of times she stopped breathing. _Good things come in threes,_ and it is a lie told to children to make them believe that there is better. There are no words to describe the numbing horror that she feels, choking-pressing-solid on her lungs and mind and heart. _You died, three times._

The four words beat a rhythm across her thoughts, over and over and again and again, like a broken recorder on loop.

"How," she murmurs as she swallows down fear and bile and terror and horror, "How did I survive? How am I still _here?_"

Mickey doesn't answer, not for a long while, and the Doctor sleeps on peacefully next to her, her personal jailer-jailbreaker. He knows so many things, so many secrets and truths and answers that he keeps from her, like a jealous lover. _(And oh, don't think the irony is lost on her.)_

"It isn't something that you should hear from me," Mickey sighs, and the words are plangent and loud in the vastness of the lab. He turns, and when he walks, his white lab coat flutters about him slightly, like descending angels or grim-reapers-gone-wrong.

He pauses at the doorway, just before he exits. "Ask him about the Mark," he tells her, and then he is gone, the door shutting softly-resoundingly behind him.

She strokes the Doctor's chestnut locks, letting the silkiness of the strands run through her fingers. Their world is changing, tilting-whirling-breaking.

He sleeps on.

X-X

_Blood. There is blood on her hands, staining-dripping her nails and palms and fingers. Everywhere is white. Snow white. Blood red. There is no –_

_Home. Come home. Come back. He is waiting. Follow the path, little girl. We will lead you home._

_Black. It is black now, a swathe of ink that blots out the sun. So black. Black, black, she cannot see. Where is –_

_Listen to the bells. They ring, once, twice, thrice. Follow the sound. He is searching._

_Pain. There is so much of it. It fires through her body, branding-searing-flaming, like a thousand stabs or a dozen gunshots. It hurts so much, and why? Someone please –_

_Light. There is light now. It comforts her, kisses her, loves her. She will take its hand._

X-X

He steals back into wakefulness, like a seasoned thief making his escape, or a killer creeping away after a murder. He jumps straight from sleep to alertness, skipping out on the stages in between. There are no slow stretches or stifled yawns that mark the gradual progress to wakefulness, not for runners and murderers like them. He goes directly from off to on.

The process is so quick, so click-of-the-fingers that the words are only half-formed at the back of her throat, her thoughts whirling faster than she can hope to cohere and give voice to. She tries anyway, and the effect is like that of a stuttering gun.

"Tell me," she begins, before she has to pause, just to breathe. "Tell me about – Mickey said I should…" She trails off. There are things she knows and things she knows she doesn't, and the overlap is slight. She tries again. "The Mark. It saved me. I need to know. What is it?"

Her sentences are short, hesitant, but the meaning cannot be mistaken. He has risen to sit upright in the chair, and she is sure that the straightness of his back is not solely the result of the hard backrest. He links his fingers together, resting his arms on his thighs. He looks, she thinks, like a thinker, or a praying man.

It is a long time before he begins, but the fact that he does eases the ache in her heart a little. He sighs, a long exhale of breath that stretches on into eternities of regret and guilt and weights-of-the-world. There are no paths around, none save for the one they are on, and even that is bramble-filled and dark. The way is shut, and there is no other way but forward.

"The Mark," he says, and the hard consonants of the word reverberate off the wall, "is within the System. It is…" He tries to find the words, because it cannot really be explained, but she means too much for him not to try. "It is an agreement of sorts. An understanding."

She opens her mouth, questions flooding the tip of her tongue, but a sharp sideways jerk of his head keeps her silent. He wants to do this, to do this alone, because he owes her that much. His eyes are dark on hers. "An understanding," he continues, "between the Operatives and all other Classes."

"But not the Watchers," she adds, and his nod is curt, almost harsh. He leans back in his chair.

"We couldn't risk the Watchers knowing, not with their ties to the Government, the Agency, and the Administrators. The force-neutrality of the Watchers makes them dangerous. You have no side, and so you won't _fight_ for any side. You won't keep our secrets."

"We fight –"

"You take orders, and fight and Watch where you're told, but the Watchers as an organisation have no political alliances or affiliations. That, I think, makes you all the more dangerous. More deadly, even if that is your best asset. But you can't deny it: the Watchers are little more than glorified hired intellectual eyes and guns."

She bristles, offended and hurt and wounded, even if the words ring hollow and true. He shakes his head, almost resignedly. Tiredly.

"I don't mean to offend you, and I have nothing against the Watchers. But it is the truth, and the truth must be faced." He runs tired hands over his face. He has been betrayed by more rogue Watchers than she would care to know. She is so fragile and strong, and he doesn't want to break her heart. Not again. "It must always be faced." She nods, because even if she doesn't like it, she knows this all too well.

He turns away, to stare out the window. His eyes are distant, and she wonders what he sees. If, she amends, he sees anything at all. He looks lost, even if he has all her answers. He, she knows, doesn't have his, and she wishes she could give them to him.

"The Operatives are third in the Hierarchy. We keep our position because we're good at what we do, because the System makes us powerful, because the world still needs us. But we're hated, you see, because of that." What he tells her isn't anything new, but the way he says it conveys libraries and chapters and tomes of weariness and tiredness and sadness that she can only glimpse, even if she shares it.

"And because we're hated, the ones we –" He stops, abruptly, and she wonders what he was going to say. She could guess at it, hope and wish and pine, but she is older now, and far sadder, so she will not. Dreams and wishes are for the young and innocent, and she is neither of those now. They are both neither of those things. The world is a harsh and cruel place, and those like them will not be given a reprieve. The boat has sailed a long time ago, and they are well aware that they have been left behind. There is no place for them in the land of redemption and mercy.

"The ones we _care about_ are never safe. So we made the Mark, to reach an agreement. We resurrected honour and respect and a code of ethics," He chuckles, broken and sad. "A _code of ethics for killing,_ imagine that. But we did, so we could keep those precious to us safe."

It puzzles her, how this has anything to do with her, how this has anything to do with what has been done to her. He is tense, a taut wire-string about to snap, and the whiplash, she knows, will be fatal. But she pushes anyway, because she is a drawn bow, and the arrow must be let fly, or the string will cut her hands.

"How?" The question is short, three letters and a question mark, but the answer, she is sure, is a long one.

It doesn't matter. They have time. They have too much time. She repeats. "How does the Mark work?"

The chair scrapes back, a halting, jerky motion as he stands and walks over to the window. The brighter lights of the city cast his profile in shadow, and she finds herself wondering why she is perennially unable to see him fully. She wonders why he never lets her.

"It's hard to explain, because it isn't a step-by-step process, not like keying in instructions to a machine or a comm device. It's like how you Watchers access the Network. It's inherent, something we Operatives all _know_ how to do, like breathing and sleeping and running. We place the Mark on –" He swallows, and it is audible. "On whoever it is that is _important_ to us, and everyone who has access to the System – Snits, Sins, Runners, Sleepers, Handlers – knows to _back off._" His knuckles whiten on the windowsill, a chilling white against the inky sky.

"It's a good process, in theory. The Operative who places the Mark remains anonymous, but the Marked is kept safe. Off-limits, in a little safe bubble. That's how it's supposed to work."

She takes in his sad eyes, the stubble on his jaw, the world's weight on his shoulders. "But it doesn't," she adds, and the lilt at the end of the phrase almost turns it into a question, although they both know that it isn't.

"It doesn't," he agrees. The knowledge hangs suspended between them, a personal Fury come to wreck vengeance. "It only works," he begins again, "when the other Classes remember to check the System. Sometimes, Sins and the others forget, and they kill or take a Marked person anyway."

"What happens then?" She wants to know, but the dark anger and swirling secrets behind his eyes mostly confirm her suspicions.

"We cry havoc," he tells her. "And let slip the dogs of war."

She understands this, and understands the ruthlessness and mercilessness and his mercurial nature. She does not blame him for it, because she understands it all too well. They tell you, _forgive and forget. Forgive,_ she understands. But what right do they have to tell you to _forget?_

X-X

_Did you hear? They took a Marked, several days ago._

_No way. Who? Which one was it?_

_Tyler, I think. That Watcher. The one that no one knows who placed the Mark on._

_But I mean it's not as if –_

_Don't be daft. We all know who that Saxon girl is Marked by, don't we? And that Japanese girl. Tohimo or Toshiko or something. But this Watcher, no one knows a thing._

_So she's just gone? Just like that?_

_Yeah. But they said –_

_Said what?_

_The Watchtower cried, and it's all over the System now. You can go check if you want._

_Right, I'll just – oh._

_You see that?_

_Yeah, I see it. RUN. Who you think that's for?_

_I don't know, mate. But just be glad that it's not us, because whoever Marked her is angry. Very angry. I think –_

_What?_

_I think that all hell's going to break loose._

X-X

Silence is loud. It is louder than gunfire, and deadlier too. It deafens them both, as they face each other in the lab.

She sighs, and stretches a hand out to him. He stares at it, for long moments, and the fear that he will not take it is crushing. She does not remember, not much and not yet, but she knows that she gave him everything, and he had kept pieces of himself from her. He is a not-quite-stranger, her lover-in-the-dark. She knows him well and not at all. She loves him, she knows, then and now, but now is different, because she doesn't know herself. How can she love someone if she doesn't even know her past?

It is a question she does not dare to begin to answer.

He takes her hand, and it is a gesture so familiar, so _right_, that she almost throws all caution and perspective to the wind. She has always belonged to him and _with_ him, but she cannot know for certain if he has always been hers. Insecurity and the lack of faith, she is aware, are not new feelings when it comes to him. She has faith that he will save her life, that he will back her up in a tight spot, that he will make her laugh and be happy when he is with her. But she doesn't trust that he will be there with her every step of the way. Missing ties from drawers and empty beds in the morning echo in the emptiness of her memory, and the feeling is not foreign.

She loves him, but she has to do this slowly, because even if she cannot remember, her heart is broken-mending, and though it belongs to him, she doesn't know that he will not drop it on the way to his next thrilling adventure, running off to save the day, leaving her in his wake.

He runs fingers along the back of her hand, light caresses that remind her that he is here.

"Why?" Her questions are short today, but they demand the longest answers. "Why did you place the Mark on me?"

"I told you, we place it on the ones we ca –"

She shakes her head, a violent motion that has her seeing fireworks behind her eyelids. She cuts him off, because she is so very tired of his dodging and running and keeping secrets. She _deserves_, she thinks, to know. "Why?"

"Because –" The words are heavy in his throat, like stones that keep sinking to the bottom of the ocean. His cowardice and fear rear their ugly heads and he falters, unable to bear the quiet wisdom and knowledge in her eyes. But he tries anyway, because it is her, and she means the world to him, even if it is hard for him to say it.

"Because," he tries again, and her hand tightens a fraction in his. "Because I loved – love – you."

Her intake of breath is sharp, slicing the silence that has enveloped them. His hand has fisted in hers, knuckles white, and she gently pries it open. She places a kiss to its centre, and curls his fingers back into a fist, as if asking him to keep it.

But she does not, he notes bitterly, give him that three-word, eight-lettered reply.

She takes his other hand, fisted in the pocket of his slacks. She traces the shape of a tiny heart onto his palm, and her eyes are pleading on his. She cannot give him the words, not yet.

Irony, he thinks, is a funny thing.

Nobody's laughing.


	19. Cyanide Wonderland

A/N: Apologies for the brief hiatus! I've been having exams, but they're almost entirely over, so I should get back to regular updates soon. Major influences for this chapter include Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Nolan's The Dark Knight.

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><p><em>When: Ground Zero (Part I)<em>

The man next to her is foreign-familiar, her past shrouded in mists and shadows. There are questions, so very many of them, but there is hardly enough time to breathe, let alone find answers. When they run, it is like opening childhood books left dusty and forgotten in abandoned libraries. When he takes her hand, it is like rediscovering a lifeline once lost. It puzzles her._ He_, she amends, puzzles her.

When he tells her to _run_, it is like a hand from the past reaching out to shake her, out of her life-limbo, out of her breathing-purgatory. He takes her breath away, in more ways than one. The street that they are on is deserted as it draws close to nineteen, and the sky above them is a swathe of inky black. They have been journeying for hours, down crowded alleys and debris-strewn lanes, up roaring motorways and silent roads.

She catches him watching her sometimes, and the expression that she finds on his face is indecipherable. It makes her think of drowning men and desperate souls, and lost children and broken-living men. He touches her in little ways; his hand firm in hers as they sprint, his hand on the small of her back in crowds, the soft brush of his body when they walk and bump. He appeared in her life a scant twenty-seven hours ago, and he feels like eternities and lifetimes on her soul.

She _knows_ him, and doesn't know how.

The street leads to a dead end, a mishmash and hodgepodge of filthy run-down houses clustered together like escaping refugees. The stench of poverty and want and need is strong in the stale night air. This is the truth about Glorious Britannia, the cracks papered up by the Government. This is their life, and she thinks it is not much better than walking-death.

She turns to him, to tell him that this is no path for them, no road for them to tread. He shakes his head at her unspoken statement, and leads her to a peeling and fading door in the corner. He knocks four times, each one resonating and resounding, echoing like swinging pendulums. The sound of bolts been drawn is heard, and the door swings open reluctantly, creaking and whining on the rusting hinges. Her breath comes in puffs, white swirls that dance around her, proof that she is alive, that she is breathing, that she is real, because sometimes she just doesn't know anymore.

It is like journeying down a rabbit hole, and with the Mad Hatter as her tour guide. But she is no Alice, no innocent curious girl, and she tries to convince herself that there is no Jabberwocky. The open doorway beckons, and his hand is light between her shoulder blades.

She steps in.

The room she enters is messy, with papers and books and maps and charts strewn about, across huge tables and over chairs. The door shuts behind her, and the snap of the locks being engaged is jolting. She shoots him a nervous glance, and is simultaneously assured and unnerved by the intensity of his gaze, dark and brooding and so, so sad on hers.

"Smith." The man who opened the door for them is curt and brief, almost reluctant to spit out that single syllable in acknowledgement of the other man in the room and his guest.

The Doctor nods, a jerky move that tells her more about the relationship between these two men that he could have ever told her in words. "Operative Harper," he acknowledges.

She keeps to the shadows, half-hidden behind the Doctor, watching the interaction with curious eyes. Harper sends her a brief glance and turns back to address him before he freezes, words dying in his throat as he swivels back to face her.

"Bloody hell." He whirls on the Doctor, his eyes never once leaving her. "What's going on? Everyone said she was –"

"We're tired, Harper. Not now." She knows his cut-off was intentional, that he had prevented her from obtaining more pieces of this puzzle she cannot solve. She is too exhausted to summon anger at him for it.

Harper's eyes never leave hers. "You can take the room downstairs. It's the only spare we have, so you'll have to bunk up."

The Doctor shifts, obviously impatient. "Yeah, sure. Can I also get the blueprints?"

Harper hands the Doctor a long roll of paper, and points to an adjacent door as he heads out another doorway. He pauses just before the threshold, hesitation and uncertainty and doubt filling this brief stop. He turns back to them. "Smith?" he calls, and the Doctor looks up from the blueprints he has unfurled.

"Yeah, what is it?"

Harper's eyes are judging and weighing on hers, and she averts her gaze, forcing her eyes to the fireplace, where flames dance and flit, like gaily dancing birds who die after leaving the warmth of their nest.

"I'm sure you know that something's wrong. This is wrong." The Doctor's knuckles, she notes, are white where he grips the table next to her. Harper continues, a foolish or too-cognizant move.

"_She_ is _wrong_."

When she exhales, her breath is no longer visible in the air.

X-X

The room that the Doctor leads her to is bare and sparse, like a skeleton left out to dry. There are two single beds against opposite walls, like enemies on either side of a battlefield, or lovers on different sides of the world. She goes to the one on the right, for no reason other than the fact that sides must be picked. They always must be.

She slides her duffel bag under the rusting bed frame, and settles onto the mattress as she tugs off her shoes. He continues standing at the door, silhouetted as the incandescent bulbs from the hallway darken and hide his face from her view. She cannot see him, this man-she-barely-knows, and she wonders if she talks in metaphors or dances in reality.

Her shoes slide off easily, like water under bridges that have been too-easily burned, or forests that have been blazed.

"You know," she begins, because this silence that crushes them both is too deadly, too lethal, and she will not let this ruin her, not when she has come so far. "I had an assignment, some time back."

He steps into the room, and his profile is revealed in the moonlight that steals through the tiny window high above them. He cocks his head, a slight leftward tilt, and she takes it as a sign to continue.

"We had to catch this rogue Handler. We were after him for months, and there were over twenty people on the job." He has unzipped his pack, and is rifling through it, but the slight turn of his head towards her tells her that he is still listening.

"But we couldn't find him. It was as if he had just dropped off the grid." She sits now, legs crossed and arms clasped together like a lounging Buddha. "Reports surfaced a few weeks after that, and we were told that he had slipped off to hide in a forest - Ashdown Forest - in DMZ* 1-Alpha-Tango."

She rubs her interlocking thumbs together, and frowns slightly when some dried, dead skin comes off. "There were massive hunts. Several hundreds were called in, but we never did find him. There was no trace, not even on the Network. It was like -" She pauses, and looks up to find his eyes on hers. "It was like he was a ghost."

Her hands unclasp, and her right hand travels down to twist and pick at the threadbare sheets beneath her. She holds his gaze. "You're an Operative, right? So tell me, what would you have done?"

He lowers himself onto the bed opposite her, sitting with his arms folded, legs sprawled, back against the wall. "Simple," he tells her, and the left corner of his lips quirk upwards. "Just burn the forest down."

She cannot tell if he is joking, but she smiles and laughs anyway.

X-X

He tells her to stay in the room the next morning, and he leaves for several hours at daybreak. Harper brings in some rations for her breakfast, and she eats the stale bread and hard cheese gratefully.

Now, she waits, and listens to the faint noises of the world outside the window and beyond the door. She is a tiny Alice now, a small stranger among these giants, a voluntary prisoner in a vast foreign landscape that extends beyond anything she has ever known.

Because even if there are no locks on the doors, and even if she can leave at any time, how can she go back now? This is the aftermath of crossing the Rubicon, this is an era lost. Just because you close your eyes doesn't mean you can forget the things you have seen.

She is a part of this now, even if she isn't, not really, not yet. She cannot go back to her world, pretending to be oblivious to the currents and eddies that rock and churn beneath the lacquered, pretty surface.

She is unaware that her hand grips and plays with the key that hangs around her neck, and continues to do so when the door swings open.

The Doctor enters, dragging a table behind him. Blueprints and maps and layouts lie strewn across it, and her hands subconsciously lift to her mouth when she realises that these inked drawings that lie before her are that of the Government's Headquarters. She opens her mouth to ask how they managed to obtain such high-level classified documents, but her words die in her throat when she sees the cautioning light in his eyes. She swallows, and moves to stand nearer to the table.

"We need your help," he tells her. "We don't know the accuracy of these blueprints, and you are the only one that has been inside the Headquarters recently. We need you to tell us if there have been any changes, what they are, the current layout, and any altered access points. Will you help us?"

She chastises herself. _This_ here is the board before her, this is the dice she has been given to roll. The Rubicon has not yet been crossed; the bridge lies before her now, mocking-calling-beckoning.

"I will," she replies, and when he grins at her, the whispers of the bygone era of her yesterdays fade away into the annals of time. Alea iacta est. The die has now been cast. This is a path that has now been taken, and there is no going back.

_(Welcome to Wonderland, Alice. Enjoy your stay.)_

X-X

They work late into the night, bending over the table and crossing out demolished rooms and mapping new pathways. When they finally stop, they push the table into a corner and collapse onto their respective beds.

They are still opposite, but she finds herself thinking that maybe that is a good thing. They complement each other in little ways; perfectly synchronised, like two dancers performing a long-rehearsed routine. It exhilarates and scares her. She will hand him a pencil just as he reaches out to take one, he will tuck a lock of her hair behind her ear just as it falls to obscure her eyes.

They have done this before, she is sure, someplace and sometime else. Echoes of another life trail faintly along the edges of her mind.

She can feel his gaze on her, intense and heavy and warm, and she shifts on the bed, turning to face him more fully.

"That forest," she begins, and he rolls his eyes in mock exasperation. "Isn't that excessive? You said you would burn it down. Why?"

His tone is light, but the words are anything but, and she wonders who this half-stranger is, and what made him so tired, so bitter, so cynical. She cannot help but be drawn to him. "Oh, you know," he stalls, hands gesturing broadly. "Sometimes the end justifies the means, don't you think?"

She frowns, and wants to tell him _no, no, not always, what about collateral?_, but he continues, and his words freeze her thoughts.

"Some men," he says, "some men just want to watch the world burn."

Her mind flashes to _Level Eighty-Nine_ and floors bathed in sunlight and devils-in-the-sky. _No_, she thinks, _no_. The man before her is broken and chipped and frayed at the edges, but he isn't one of them, and she will not believe it, no matter what he thinks or says.

She reaches out across the gulf that separates their two beds, and takes his hand.

"Not you," she tells him, and is sure she doesn't imagine the brief tightening of his fingers on hers.

* * *

><p>*DMZ - Demilitarised Zone<p> 


	20. Hardboiled Vindication

A/N: Major influences include Carol Ann Duffy's _Quickdraw_, Albert Camus, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and Philip Larkin's _An Arundel Tomb_.

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><p><em>When: Post-Ground Zero<em>

Silence is familiar. It is an old friend of theirs, a constant presence between the maelstrom of action and sound and movement that ticker-tapes their lives. Sometimes she resents Silence, other times she is grateful for it, and most of the time she breaks it. But not today. Not now. She has had enough of breaking and being broken.

"Let me ask you a question," Mickey begins. "When you run, is it away from or towards something?"

She watches the two men before her, each standing apart, but in this together. They cannot see her, not when she is shrouded in the shadows of the dark hallway. _Let's take a break_, Mickey had told her, and she had agreed, leaving to catch her breath and regain herself in the hallway.

Too many secrets are being unveiled today. It is almost too much. They slam into her like freight trains, weighty and solid-deadly. They leave her gasping, with the bitter aftertaste of salt and bile and blood on her tongue.

There is a pause, and breaths and clock ticks are hasty eternities before Mickey receives a reply. "I don't know," the Doctor sighs. "What does it matter?"

"It always matters, in the end."

The Doctor clears his throat, a harsh sound, like a final gunshot, or a crack of a whip. "Maybe," he starts, "just maybe, it's the journey that's more important."

She has heard it being said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Once, she might have been inclined to agree. But the person she was, the person she thought she was and she person she is now are all very different people, so she cannot say for certain.

A single step is fatal. When you are on the precipice, on the edge of the world you know, one step takes you out into the darkness. And to survive, you must believe that you have either something solid to walk on, or that you will learn to fly.

She believes neither. She is fresh out of faith and belief and conviction.

She steps into the room anyway, because even if she does not believe, she has nothing left to lose.

Maybe there is something to be learnt in falling.

X-X

"You ready?" Mickey asks her.

_No_, she wants to tell him. _No_, she wants to scream. How can anyone be ready for this? The soothing words and calm tones are well-intended, she knows, but she cannot help but want to throw them back in his face.

The Watcher implant in her wrist glows faintly, pulsing and flaring, like a beacon or lighthouse for those lost at sea.

Her heart thrums a staccato rhythm, pounding-knocking-pushing.

_Your traumatic disseverance from the Network left you with a broken link when they reuploaded you to it. We need to repair that. From there, we can begin to patch your memories back together. We can fix you._

She wishes Mickey wouldn't put it like that. _Fix you_. It is like she is broken, like a discarded toy from an errant, irresponsible child, like a factory cast-off. Maybe the person she is now isn't who she was before; must she go back to the way she was?

She has always thought that growing involved moving forward, not back.

They tell her, _this is not who you are_. Maybe it isn't. Maybe she's fine with that. The ghosts of her past non-life are like the rasp of dry leaves hitting the autumn ground, like bloody sunset skies, like frozen-dead bodies in winter. There is dichotomy in her now; Paradoxes. Oxymorons. Two people.

She is not who She is because She is not Herself, but She is not Herself because She is not who She is.

_(philosophy has little place in the real world, darling. don't confuse yourself.)_

When she was a girl (or not really, no, this is not real, none of this happened, truly), she used to play a game. _Marco Polo._ Louis Stevenson, the boy in apartment thirteen, would wear a blindfold, and all the neighbourhood kids would head to the open field just off Shelby Park. He'd call, _Marco!_ And they'd all answer, _Polo!_ And he would try to find them, blindly and feelingly.

But this, now, this is not a game. This is no child's play, no gleeful dash-in-the-park. This is her life, her, before and after, history and future.

_(Marco. Marco. Marco.)_

Her fists are clenched, and her nails dig painfully into her palms. The Doctor stands off to one side of the room, a thousand miles away. She can see hope and frustration and concern and love and anger and sadness and hesitation in his eyes.

"Are you ready?" Mickey repeats.

_No. No. No_. "Yes."

_(Polo.)_

X-X

There is a platform, and there is a station. There is a blinding white. There is a bench, there is a woman, and there is a woman on the bench.

There are, however, no trains.

There are no people, and that is the first thing she notices. When she looks around, she sees a clock, but that clock has no hands. The platform boards are empty beneath the _DESTINATION_ header.

She wonders if she could stay here. It is quiet. It is calm. It is peaceful. And lonely? No. No, this is not loneliness. She has known loneliness, hated it and loved it and fought with it like a tenacious, possessive lover. This is loneliness, but the good kind. Solitude.

She cannot remember how she got here, or why she is here. But that doesn't matter anymore, she is sure. There is a station, and there is her, and that is that.

The bench beneath her is firm. The wood is faded and slightly marred, but that is alright, she deems, because she likes the texture. She slides a palm over the roughened surface, over and over, like a sculptor sanding down his finest work.

She hears the _slap, slap_ of sneakers hitting hard concrete pavements behind her. She turns, because she has always been too curious for her own good. Not this time, though. This time, she is just too curious.

"Hi," he says, and smiles when she looks at him, mouth agape. He takes a seat on the bench next to her.

"How did you get here?" She asks, because that is the most important question of all. You cannot get somewhere if you don't know where you are going, or if you don't know where this is. She is confident he knows neither.

He laughs. "I'm just a figment of your imagination, you know." He spreads his hands, waves them around for effect. "Your mind made me up. I'm not real." He looks around, quick side-to-side glances. "Well, not here, at least. I'm up there." He jerks his thumb upwards, towards the endless expanse of the white, white sky.

With dispassionate interest, she observes that there is no roof. She nods at him, almost absent-mindedly, and returns to tracing the scarred bench surface. She hears him sigh.

"Aren't you going to ask me where _up there_ is?"

She shakes her head. Here is good. Here, there is no confusion. No frustration. No feeling. No pain. She distantly recalls _somewhere_, a place where she bled and laughed and cried, where she smiled, where she lived like sparking switchblades; like edging madness; like falling dreams; like it _hurt_.

She does not want to go back.

"The story's not finished, you know."

She knows this, of course she knows this, how can she not? She is the main protagonist, the key character. Of course she knows that it is far from over.

"Doctor," she begins. "We've had our once-upon-a-time, haven't we?"

He nods slowly. Neither of them look at each other, both staring out onto the empty platform, waiting for trains that may never come.

"And that happily-ever-after," she continues. "We never did get that, did we?"

She doesn't look at him, but she can feel the tension in his shoulders, the clench of his jaw, the tightening of his fists.

"The story's not over," he echoes.

She closes her eyes.

"Is it?" She breathes. "Is it really?"

She wakes up.

_(Welcome back, Princess.)_

X-X

Reality is cold. Harsh. The room is sterile and corpse-white, littered with the cold floor of her horrors.

Information and Knowledge and _Everything_ floods into her at once. Things like _pecan pie recipes and Heliotrope-7 schematics and criminal procedure code, section v addendum 4.5 and the best haircuts for round-faced women! and homeostasis is the maintenance of optimal body conditions and xanthosic acid is the yellowish acid commonly found in tumours and pi equals 3.14159265.._.

It is _Everything_. The Network opens to her, like the sought-after gates of paradise, like the collapse of the fabled walls of Troy. It is too much.

Mickey is at the bank of monitors across the room, watching her neural readings and implant transmissions. The Doctor is at her bedside, eyes focused on her with rapt attention.

Mickey bounds up to her, face split in a grin. "We did it. Well, one part of it, anyway. You're back online in the Network. Fully online."

She cannot bring herself to smile, so she squeezes his hand, and quirks her lips upwards. "What next?" She asks, and does not miss the way he shoots the Doctor a careful glance.

She fears his next words, and the urge to run away is strong. The person she is now slips further and further from her grasp, leaving her scrabbling and stranded with the ghost of who she once was. She avoids the Doctor's eyes.

_I love you_, he said. Love _who?_ She wants to ask him, wants to shake him. Rose Before and Rose Now are two different people, even if they look and sound and seem alike.

The chair beneath her is smooth, polished synthetic leather in muted grey. When her hand slips off her lap to touch it, the smoothness is like the searing lick of white-hot flames; like icicles in empty caves; like slamming doors on chilly days.

"Next?" Mickey parrots. "We'll have to link you up again, and from there we'll work on getting your memory back. We'll try to wipe the wipe, so to speak - to find out if they erased it for good, or if everything's merely boxed and stored somewhere in your mind."

"Mmm," she lets out, non-committal and more than a little afraid. Mickey takes her vitals again, and heads back to the wall of monitors.

"Let's take a break, shall we?" The sound of the Doctor's voice jars her, and her mind barely registers Mickey nodding and muttering about getting a cup of tea. The Doctor has been too quiet, too reserved, too silent.

"I remember," she tells him, "I remember waking one morning and finding everything smeared with the colour of forgotten love."

He hums in acknowledgement of her words, but silence follows, like the world on mute, like a bird shot out of air.

"How did you know," he picks up, "at that time, that it was forgotten love?"

"I didn't. But it hurt, and everything was empty, and I thought:_ this, this is what sadness feels like._ Later, when I met you, there was happiness, calamity, high noon - and beneath everything, there was that colour. And I knew."

He sighs. "Sometimes, I feel like I'm drowning, with no land in sight."

"And is that a bad thing?"

He reaches out to take her hand, and the feel of it in hers is better than scarred benches and smooth chairs and the granite-hard chips of diamond-dust. How, she wonders, how can you feel like you're falling and standing still at the same time?

"I don't know," he replies. "Should it be?"

She bites her lip, and fists her free hand in her lap. This here is the million-dollar question, the crux of it all, almost.

"Only if you want it to."

He takes her answer and ponders over it, and she sees the way he rolls it around his tongue, moulds and shapes it in his mind. She is not privy to the conclusion he comes to, but when Mickey reenters the lab, he squeezes her hand once and presses a quick kiss to her wrist before moving to stand in the corner of the room near the window.

"So, Rose," Mickey approaches, medical equipment in tow. "You up for this now?"

She swallows once, twice.

She nods. "The story's not over, after all."

_(Marco Polo.)_


	21. Jasmine, Gunpowder, Assam

**A/N:** We're almost at an end, guys! Three more chapters. I feel weepy; this story is like my baby. In any case, the title's from Carol Ann Duffy's _Tea_. Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

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><p><em>When: Ground Zero (Part II)<em>

"Well, Rose."

His voice is insidious, soft, a serpent-in-the-air. She will not falter. She will not fail. She must not. She doesn't miss the way he takes perverse delight in her involuntarily clenched fist, nails digging into the flesh of her palm.

"It's such a _delight_ to see you again!" He leans forward on his long, long glass desk, face thrown in and out of shadow with each tilt and turn of his head. "You really _must_ tell me. How are you?" He cocks his head, and her voice is a dead weight in her throat.

He waits, and she struggles to articulate a response. Fear is a paralysing agent, but she has to fight it, because _he will kill her, oh god he's going to kill her -_

"I'm fine, Master. Thank you."

He twirls a gleaming black fountain pen in his bone-white fingers, like a conductor's baton; like a candy cane; like a glittering scythe. He laughs, but it isn't, not really, it is a-thousand-people-dying, a-battalion-of-gunfire.

"That's good to hear. Wouldn't want my _favourite_ Watcher to be upset now, would we?"

"No, Master."

"Come, then. Tell me what the world is doing now." He spreads his hands, makes a sweeping gesture. The movement is like a slicing knife on tender, tender skin; a blade's unbearable caress. She flinches.

"Colonel Lumic sends an all-clear, and calls your attention to the rebel forces on the Southern front. Eurasia has weakened since the demise of Comrade Putin. General Saxon advises an invasion within the next month, before they can consolidate forces. Americania once again calls for a ceasefire, and is pushing for a new round of peace talks. The Paris office has reported the misappropriation of three hundred rationing booklets, and the Munich office reports a dissenter preaching _democracy_."

"Ah, very nice. Get Saxon to mount an invasion. Ignore Americania, and threaten unfriendly action if they persist. Execute the Paris officer in charge of the booklets, and send the Munich dissenter to Headquarters for some _lessons_."

"Yes, Master."

"Find Lumic. Tell him it's time. Tell him: _418117711389109463._ The Rubicon." He flicks his hand, a dismissive gesture, like the callous swatting of a fly; like the starting strands of a funeral dirge.

She leaves, stealing out of the room like a convict escaping the gallows, like a wanderer leaving nowhere. The lift doors slide open, the gates-of-damning-paradise, and she walks in. Just before they close, she keeps her eyes on the blinding light of Level Eighty-Nine, on the painful sunlight stabbing the floor.

_Dead_, she thinks. _The sun is dying_.

Why is everything dying?

X-X

"He told you something. Something important."

She freezes at the doorway of this hole-in-the-wall, this run-down base of field operations. She is a part of this now, yet another pawn in yet another game. She is so tired of games. Who ever asked her if she wanted to play?

She looks at the Doctor, puzzled. "He told me many things. He spoke of murder and killing, of execution and destruction. He spoke of death."

He comes up to her, takes her cold hand in his. "I know he did. Death - death is an old friend of his, you see. But it's more than that this time. He spoke of something else. Something worse. I could taste it. I could feel it. Something was _wrong_. Something _is_ wrong."

He rubs warmth and blood and life back into her hand. "You need to tell me. We can stop him. We _need_ to stop him. This - everything - this has to end."

He has led her to their cramped room in the basement. The walls are suddenly too thin, the room too small, the air too choking.

"Why?" she asks. "Why does it have to _change?_" She tugs her hands from his, grips the lapels of his coat too tightly in her fists. "How do you know that it should? How can you guarantee that what comes after is better? How can you still _believe?_"

He draws a hand up, placing his palm against her cheek. His hand is rough and calloused, and the friction it makes with the smooth skin of her cheek is like the jagged edges of crinkled paper; like the flutter of a memory of stubble scraping against her. She turns into it.

"Change is the only constant," he tells her. "There are those of us who have nothing - nothing to mark time by, nothing to hold onto. Change keeps us believing that there are better days to come, that those that were lost can be found again. That because the world won't be the same, the way things are won't be either."

He buries his face in her hair, inhales the faint scent of flowers and musk and Rose. "For some of us, it is the belief that _things will change_ that keeps us going."

She presses her face into the curve of his neck as he continues. "And you know what? When you're at rock bottom, the only other way to go is up."

X-X

"418117711389109463. You're sure he said that? Those numbers exactly?"

"Yes. Yes, I'm sure. And The Rubicon. That's what he said - it was all for Colonel Lumic."

"Lumic? _John_ Lumic? Minister of Peace and Inter-class Accord?"

"Yes, him. He also said that _'it's time'_."

The Doctor runs a frustrated hand down his face, and turns to Operative Harper. "You got anything on this? Any ideas?"

Harper shakes his head, pen tapping the table surface in from of him.

"None. I've crunched the numbers - this code isn't the usual encryption, or any of the known Government ones, for that matter. And I've checked all the Government buildings - none of them bears the name of _The Rubicon_. Neither does anywhere in London, or Greater London."

"So we've got all the details we need to stop him, but we can't because we aren't able to decipher it. _Fuck. Fuck_." The Doctor is visibly agitated, running his hands through his hair. She sits in a corner of the room, watching. She is, after all, a Watcher first and foremost.

"Look, Smith, you know the bastard best. You spent _seven years_ with him, for God's sake. _Surely_ you must have something."

They have been at this for hours. The hands of the clock creep forward, inching along like their dismal lives. With each new number the clock hands jump to, the sands in the hourglass diminish. Time is the one thing they don't have.

"I don't think it's a place," she says, her voice wavering and unsure. She knows that Operative Harper disapproves of her presence here, and she is too much of a newcomer to want to step on anyone's toes. She almost stops, her words faltering and almost petering out, but she catches the Doctor's reassuring gaze, and it gives her confidence. "It's likely an allusion to something, or a moniker they've given someplace. He's not stupid."

"Right, you're right." A chair is scraped back, and the Doctor stands. He strides over to the sprawling map of London that is draped across the entire left wall of the room. "That bastard's too full of himself - it's just like him to come up with a pretentious codename like The Rubicon. But where? And what does it mean?"

Harper pipes in, deigning to join their conversation. "The Rubicon. That's a river, isn't it?"

Rose nods. "An ancient one. Caesar had to cross it, beyond which there was no chance of return."

The Doctor lets out a laugh, a harsh bark that rings hollow and empty. "Yeah, he would name it after that. He was always fond of poetic justice."

"The Agency." Harper and the Doctor startle, and she notes the way they shoot quick glances at each other. "I think it's at the Agency. That's -" she clears her throat. "That's where you're both from, aren't you?"

"How do you -"

"I'm a Watcher. I may be a faulty one, but I'm still a Watcher." There is a long silence, stretching into the minutes that they don't have.

The Doctor is the first to break it. "There's no way it'd be at the Agency. That would have to mean that they have a mole in there. A high-ranking one."

Rose is sure. There is a feeling in her gut, like screaming truths and unravelling myths. "No. No, I'm sure it's there. Think about it. If you're going to destroy the Network, where else is better than in the Repository itself? It's what you said: poetic justice."

"She has a point, Smith."

The Doctor's jaw is clenched, and he has turned away from her.

"No. You're not going in there. You're not going back."

She hears the unspoken words: _we're not going back_.

But they are. They have to. She has to find out who she was, what happened, what is happening. What happened to _them_. The story lies before her, and she can almost reach out to flip the cover, to begin to read their tragic fairytale.

Harper breaks in, slamming a fist onto the table as he leaps up. "_I've got it_. I've got the code. It's the fibonacci sequence and the alphabet. 4181, that's T. 17711, W. 3, E. 89, L. 10946, V. 3, E. It's at twelve tomorrow. This is it. We've got them now." He paces, then strides across the room to the doorway. "I'm going to call the others. We're doing this, Smith, whether you like it or not."

The Doctor fists his hands, sighs a long, aching breath. She reaches out, strokes his cheek.

"We need to do this," she says, and wonders when_ the Doctor_ and _Rose_ became a we.

He raises his hand, rests it over hers. His eyes are dark, dark and swirling like the waters of the Styx, like the finality of the Rubicon.

"We do, don't we?"

And so they begin.

_(Once upon a time, in a faraway land)_

X-X

She has walked this route innumerable times before, thought she cannot remember it. She knows the number of steps into the yawning chasm like she knows the back of her hand, and the sour-acrid taste of past lives unlived stain her tongue. Her heart is beating, drumming like the tattoo of machine-gun-fire, like the pitter-patter spray of dirt thrown over a freshly-dug grave.

Her hand is in his. _Nineteen, eighteen, seventeen_. The reinforced steel doors lie ahead of them, Titans rising up from the ocean of metal that surrounds them. She wants to bolt, to run screaming and crying from this maelstrom of silence and madness.

But she doesn't, because though she is almost mindlessly terrified and too frightened for words, she is _Rose Tyler_, and she has always faced her demons, even the ones she cannot remember. _Ten, nine_.

This is like a game, a sick and twisted game of cat-and-mouse, of kings and queens and pawns, of who-killed-who-in-what-room? The doors ahead mock them, like the entrance to an abandoned wonderland, to a rotting gingerbread house.

He tugs his hand gently from hers, and she hears the _click, click_ of his Glock. She keeps her eyes dead ahead, never leaving the steel doors. He nudges her.

"You should check your Beretta, just to be sure."

She swallows. Nods. He does not comment on the way her hands fumble on her gun, or on the way they tremble and shake ever-so-slightly, and she is grateful for that.

"Stick to the plan. Let me do the talking - it'll throw him off. He's not expecting me."

She nods again. They have gone over this a dozen times; the steps and stages are burnt into the recesses of her mind. This is the culmination of everything they have been working towards, this is the end of the line.

_Five, four -_

There is a slight pause in her step, and he notices this. They stop. "Are you alright?"

_No. No_, she isn't. She cannot help but feel that everything from now is a defining moment, that this will be the distinct point that will change everything forever. This here is the one event from which everything she thinks of will be relegated to _before_ or _after_. On the spidery timeline of her mind, this is the epicentre, the point that everything stretches out from, like dusty webs that shiver in the wind.

She catches his eye, looks at him fully. She takes in his beautiful, tired, broken-battered face, his sad, sad eyes. She soaks in the image of him in his dusty pinstriped suit, in his long brown overcoat.

"Yes," she replies. "Yes, I'm fine."

_Three._

He takes her hand back in his. "Ready?"

_Two._

She nods.

_One._

_(ready or not, here we come.)_


	22. Before the Mockingbird Weeps

****A/N: Two more chapters left, guys! Inspiration for this one includes Harry Potter and the Death Hallows, and Murakami's 1Q84. The two italicised lines used that refer to willows is taken from Shakespeare's Othello. Enjoy!

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><p><em>When: Post-Ground Zero<em>

She is here, at the train station again, and everything is white. This world is silent, quiet, in muted mourning. She stands under the platform board, staring out into the distance, into the empty station.

She walks. Her footfalls are noiseless; a gentle wind whispers against her skin. She frowns. There was a bench here before, gone now without a trace. She turns back to face the mounted clock. There are hands on the clock face this time.

She watches the clock for long minutes, for days, maybe. Time is of no importance here. Nothing is of importance here.

The clock does not move; stuck at perpetual twelve.

She turns back, continues walking. There seems to be no end to the station, and she cannot reach the platform edge. She stops.

This is when she begins to laugh, and this is when she begins to cry. She doesn't know why. The laughter and tears are a violent onslaught, wrecking and racing through her slight frame with shudders and tremors and shaky breaths. She is frightened, she is exhilarated, she is terrified, she is thrilled.

A whole gamut of emotions run through her, and she stands on the deserted platform, alone and painfully aware.

Like the last time; like triumphant returns; like broken welcomes - she hears him before she sees him.

"Hi," he says, and deja vu is a strong, potent friend.

Tears make her vision blurry, laughter clogs her throat. It takes her several attempts, but she is able to give voice to her words eventually.

"You," she gasps out. "You're always here, aren't you? You're everywhere."

He sighs, looks at her the way a parent looks at a petulant child. "I thought we established this the last time you were here. I'm not real. Your mind made me up. So don't blame me for being here."

"Right, right," she laughs-sobs. "You're up there, wherever." Her hands flutter about, gesturing aimlessly to the sprawling, sterile-white sky.

He sends her a pointed look, taking her hand and guiding her to a familiar bench. She caresses the roughened wood beneath her palms.

"This wasn't here. It was the last time, I mean, but not - not when I got here earlier."

He makes a noise at the back of his throat, a non-committal grunt. "Well," he says, "things change."

Silence drops over them, like a hovering blanket or a funeral shroud. She would call this quiet companionable, but all the silences she knows are like this, mottled-heavy-cloying-breathable, and so she will leave it nameless.

The clock chimes, but remains at its perennial twelve, both hands plangent atop each other, like lovers in tired repose. Neither of them speak. They keep silent vigil, like prison guards watching capital prisoners; like lost civilisations and descendants; like burnt trees in flourishing forests.

She breaks it. The peace and apathy of this place has been forfeit a long time ago, eons ago, a whole world ago. Thoughts and memories and fragments filter past so fast and slow that they leave her breathless.

Finding herself is a far more daunting task than toppling empires or governments, because who is this person-in-her-reflection? It is a question that has kept its answer just out of reach, and now that she can finally grasp it, she wonders if the mystery is as enthralling as she imagined it would be.

"They tell you to try again, and again until you succeed," she begins. "But what if you never succeed? What then? When do you stop? When do you give up, and tell yourself that this is the end?"

She looks at him, eyes wide and open, heart bare and tattered. His answer is suddenly the most important thing in the world; more important than breath or life.

"It depends," he tells her. "It depends on what it is you want. Some things," he swallows, "some things you drop, and cut your losses before it drains too much from you."

He reaches out across the gulf of the eighteen inches that separate them on the cold wooden bench, and trails a finger down the nape of her neck, along the curve of her jaw.

"Other things," he continues, "you don't give up on. But you have to learn that these things - you have to let go, and hope it doesn't hurt too much."

He curls a finger around a lock of her hair. "Giving up and letting go are not the same. Letting go takes courage."

She turns into him, buries her face into his neck, into the hollow of his collarbone. "Does it hurt?" she asks, her voice muffled and tired. "Does it hurt a lot?"

He strokes her back, soft repetitive motions meant to comfort. "Yes," he whispers. "Yes, it does."

He presses a kiss to the side of her head. She closes her eyes, squeezes them shut, tries to ignore the gaping wound on her heart.

"I'm sorry," he murmurs. She forces her eyes open.

Looking at the sky, she realises that it is so pale and white that it bleeds black.

X-X

The world shifts. It changes, and it whirls and bleeds and ebbs and flows a thousand different colours.

Britannia. She sees it in a second, in a minute, in an hour, in a month. The towering skyscrapers and ageing buildings of Queens and Kings long gone are juxtaposed in poetic disharmony, and she sees the flickering lights of the city before they sputter and die in the morning sun.

_(Really, though. Britannia is a battlefield - you've seen it, haven't you?)_

The train station is gone, and she stands alone on a beach. The waves lap the shore in repetitive motions, breaking and resurging in an endless, tireless dance.

In the distance, she can see bold, jagged letters, carved into the wet sand. The words are big - bigger than her, stretching out for yards. She walks towards it, and the salty wind of the ocean caresses and bites her face.

_BAD WOLF,_ it reads.

There is a niggling thought at the back of her mind; a persistent reminder that there is something she needs to remember, a place she needs to return to.

The words are written close to the water, and the greedy ocean gradually whittles the letters away. She watches with growing alarm - _the letters are going, the words are vanishing, something is moving out of reach, why can't she just remember?_

This same alarm has her picking up a sea-swept branch, one of the flotsam and jetsam of the infinite blue. She frantically scratches the words back into the sand, tracing them over and over and over, digging the branch into the loamy dampness.

Like time, the sea continues down its unstoppable, inevitable path, and the words are eroded more quickly than she can save them.

_(the fresh streams ran by her and murmured her moans; sing willow, willow, willow)_

Abruptly, she stops. She tosses the branch away, and watches as it is carried out to sea, like the bodies of lost men. When she turns back to the shore, the words are gone.

She is fine with that, she surmises. The words have been washed and scrubbed and yanked away, but it is alright, because she tried to save them, even if she failed in the end. The sand is unblemished and smooth where the words once were, and she is reminded of the straight-level ground of freshly-filled graves, and of the flat-pressed uniforms of soldiers.

The beach extends endlessly ahead of her, and she walks.

There is somewhere she needs to be.

_(her salt tears fell from her and softened the stones; sing willow, willow, willow)_

She can hear gulls calling and shrieking overhead in the distance, and the infinite stretch of sand beckons her forward.

X-X

The pub is crowded. The rowdy, bawdy London night-crawlers flock to watering holes like these for hours of drowning, balming sessions.

She is sitting on a low-slung sofa, back against the wall, facing the entire room.

"The world for a Rose," comes a voice next to her.

She turns her head, and finds Jack lounging in a leather armchair to her left. She startles, mouth agape. He chuckles a little at her surprise, and waves off the questions that lie on the tip of her tongue.

"No, no. I'm not _real_ either. None of this is, don't you see? It's all a part of your imagination." He swills his snifter of brandy, stares hard into the amber-coloured liquid fire.

He lifts his eyes abruptly to hers.

"_Think,_ Rose. Are you alive?"

She frowns, unsure of his question. "I am," she says. "Of course I am."

He shakes his head slowly, eyes boring into hers. "Are you?" he asks. "Are you really?"

She leans forward towards him, straining to get his meaning. "What do you mean?"

His smile is slow, vaguely leonine and oh-so-secretive. "Look at this brandy, Rose. What colour is it?"

She studies it, watching the way the liquid dances and sways in its little glass prison. "It's yellow. Amber. Gold."

"Ah," Jack tells her, and his secret-sly smile grows wider. "Gold. You know what they say about gold?"

She shakes her head.

"Six for gold," he murmurs. "Five for silver, six for gold."

She clenches her fist, bites back a groan of frustration. "I don't understand," she grits out, "I don't know what all this is supposed to mean."

Jack stands, and sets the snifter onto the mahogany table in front of them with a decisive _click_.

"You do, bubba. You do."

He walks away, and she watches him weave and swerve through the crowd until his back disappears from sight.

X-X

The bench is hard against her back, and the white skies above her are glaring and searing and burning her eyes. She sits up.

The station clock begins to chime; a repetitive, guttural sound that resonates and ricochets of her brittle-tired-steel bones.

"I'm back," she says to no one, looking around the deserted train platforms.

She tries to stand, and feels a solid weight in her pocket. When she pulls the object out, she finds that it is an intricately carved fob watch.

Prying open the cover, it reads five minutes to twelve. The station clock ahead is still locked in its eternal twelve, and she shuts the fob watch with a hasty-uncertain snap.

She stands, and begins running towards the station entrance.

She trips and stumbles and falls and teeters, gasping and straining to reach the gates for reasons she cannot fathom. It is almost visceral: _run._ The words repeats and echoes and resounds in her mind.

The fob watch rests unopened in her pocket, but she _knows_ that it is eleven-fifty-seven, and her heart beats a drumming tattoo that screams and wails. _Faster. Faster._ Her legs are aching; her lungs are failing. The entrance is so very far away.

Eleven-fifty-eight. She can almost see him, can almost hear the timbre and cadence of his low voice whispering in her ear.

Eleven-fifty-nine. She throws herself beyond the gates, and is engulfed by the ghostly white. _I am not afraid, _she shouts, heart pounding in her chest. _I am not frightened. _

_My name,_ she gasps out, _is Rose Tyler._

Behind her, the station falls apart.

X-X

She jerks back to consciousness with a half-strangled breath, skin clammy and mind reeling. Mickey hovers over her, presses whirring buttons and taking beeping readings. His face is worried; eyebrows furrowed.

"Take it easy," he says. "How do you feel?"

She swallows once, then twice. She clears her throat. She draws her gaze to the Doctor.

"Alive," she replies. "I feel alive."

She gulps down the water Mickey shoves into her hand. Her eyes never leave the Doctor, silent and brooding in the far corner of the room.

Her face splits into a jagged smile.

"Theta. I'm back."


	23. Simulacra

**A/N**: This is it! It's effectively the last proper chapter, discounting the epilogue. I can't believe I've made it this far. Thank you so, so, so much to everyone who's been with me every step of the way - I wouldn't have made it all the way here without all of you. This chapter's a tad confusing in its frustratingly minimalist style, so don't worry if you don't understand all of it - that's the point. ;) Interpret the chapter however you want to.

If you're really floundering, though, I advise rereading Ground Zero (Chapter 1) and Jasmine, Gunpowder Assam (Chapter 21)!

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><p><em>When: Ground Zero (Part III)<em>

"Oh, oh, _oh_. Look what we have here! Look what the cat dragged in, boys."

She cannot breathe. His voice is insidious, paralysing, terrifying. Her heart is beating too fast for her chest. Her breaths are not coming. Her hands are trembling. Her mind is racing.

This is the end, the beginning, Lucifer-and-the-fall. The Doctor is beside her, with her; she is so alone. Her head is whirring with thoughts that are hers and aren't. _What is he doing to them?_ She wants to drop her gun. She wants to shoot him. She wants to shoot herself.

"Rose, Rose, Rosie _darling_. I see you've already been enthralled by our wonderful new piece of technology. It's the Pied Piper, and you are the foolish, foolish children. How upsetting. How disappointing, Rose Tyler. One would have thought Little Red more capable of fending off the Pied Piper after the Big Bad Wolf, no?"

_Oh_, she thinks. _Oh. Is this the end? Is this how I am meant to die?_ There are prickles against her skin, like tiny running spiders that fleetingly brush her cold, cold body. The Repository. They keep everything here, you know. Everything. This is history. This is tradition. This is her people. This is _foolishness_.

_What?_ Her mind sputters, her eyes flicker like stuttering guns. Laughter. She can hear distant laughter, howling-raging-cackling.

"Theta, my boy. Look at you! Such a handsome man now, aren't you. You and me, I always knew you were going to be the prettier one._ So smart_, everyone said, remember? _So talented_. And how nice of that Theta boy, hanging out with that little Koschei outcast, hmm? My, my, Theta. As far as reunions go, ours does take the cake."

"You're _dead_. You died. _I saw you die_. How are you here? What are you? You're not - you're not _my brother, my friend_, you're not - you can't be Koschei. _You can't be_."

_Oh dear_, Rose thinks. _Hickory dickory dock_. Time. Time. That's it, that's what she needs to remember, only she can't, because this isn't her, there is something in her mind, oh god, oh god, time, they need time, why don't they have any of that? Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

_(the mouse ran up the clock.)_

"I AM NOT DEAD!" She hears the Master roar, she feels the vibrations of his anger, feels the projectiles of his spittle, feels his madness, feels his depravity. "Rose, darling, come here now, be a good girl." He pats the spot next to him, where he is sitting on a low table.

"Rose, don't - fight this, _come on_, Rose, you can do this, _fight him_, fight the control, Goddammit!"

What was it again? _Right_. Alright. Breathe. Breathe. She tries, she really, really tries, but it hurts so much, so very very much. Her wrist throbs like pounding heartbeats, like discordant drums.

"_Rose_," he - the Master, the Master, my Master? - snaps, and she keens, a high wail that pierces her ears and breaks her heart. "Come here." I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, she thinks, and she obeys, and it's good for a while, because the pain is gone, and that is good, isn't it?

"I will _kill you_ where you stand, and I will _enjoy_ every minute of it," she hears him seethe, but this, this is the Doctor, he is a good man, right? "_Let her go_."

"Oh, my," he chuckles, this demon-creature-man that twists her hair around his fingers, tugs and pulls and hurts her. "What did they teach us at the Academy, Theta? Violence is bad. Very, very bad. Borusa would be so disappointed, you know. His golden boy, reduced to such threats."

_(humpty dumpty had a great fall.)_

No. No. This is wrong. This is not right. These are not her thoughts, where are her thoughts, where is her mind? Focus, Rose. Focus. Break his control.

She sits next to him on his perch, trying to ignore the way he makes the blood in her veins freeze up, the air in her lungs feel cold. He twirls a lock of her hair around his fingers, and she flinches. He sees the flinch, and the finger in her hair tightens painfully.

"So feisty, isn't she, Doctor? I can see why you keep her around as your little pet." The Master eyes the Doctor maliciously, and she can almost see the cogs turning viciously in his warped, twisted mind. "Maybe I should keep her for myself, just to see what the fuss is all about."

"_Why?_" she hears the Doctor grit out. "Why are you doing this?"

The Master tugs her closer, licks the line of her jaw, bites down on her earlobe. Her stomach revolts, and she is so horrified, terrified, disgusted at the gesture that her insides churn and her vision briefly fades to black.

"You know what your problem is?" he asks the Doctor, and she knows he perversely savours her every shiver, her every shudder of revulsion. "I could see it so clearly, even when we were chums back in the Academy, you know." He sighs, almost put-upon if not for the cruel glint in his eyes. "You always ask the wrong questions. Even now. You should really, really be asking..."

The Master smiles, macabre and twisted and depraved. "Why _not?_"

_(all the king's horses and all the king's men)_

The world around her is too loud, too bright, too overwhelming. Her body is not her own, and neither are her thoughts. He wields her fully in his power, and she can do nothing to stop it. She is a doll, and he is the Puppet-Master.

"Come," he says to her. "Light a match." He extends a box to her, leads her over to the databank of the Watchers. Her mind screams.

"Watch your people burn."

_(couldn't put humpty together again)_

X-X

_One-two, three-four; one-two, three-four._

She can follow the rhythm in her sleep, the double-timed double-beat that rings in her ears like funereal metronome. _[INITIATE SEQUENCE.]_

_One-two._

But she is not asleep, is she? No. No, she is awake, she is sure of this. _[RUN PROGRAMME.]_ She is here because she has something she needs to do, a purpose to serve; something she gave up her identity, her entire life for.

_Three-four._

The room around her is blurred around the edges, like a fading photograph, or a half-remembered dream. She can hear voices. Male, tenors and baritones and low cadences. She hurts. It hurts, everywhere. She will need to see a Doctor. _[ERROR. DELETE.]_

_One-two._

A Doctor? No. The Doctor. _[EXTRANEOUS DATA. REMOVE FROM SYSTEM.]_

_Three-four._

Bright, bright light. She can see it now.

_She is not the little girl in this tale, you know. She is the -_

_[ACTIVATION COMPLETE.]_

_Bad Wolf._

X-X

She will not remember any of this, but the evidence will be clear.

She will not remember the way she tears through four men, ripping and plunging and tearing and ravaging. She will not remember laughing and giggling as she blows a man's brains out with her Beretta. She will not remember the Doctor yelling, pleading with her to stop, because this isn't you, Rose, don't let Them take away who you are. She will not remember the way the Master ran, with the Doctor on his heels as they wind deeper into the bowels of the Repository.

She will not remember the way her hands were stained red, red like the cape a little girl in another story a long time ago wore, red like life and death and everything in between. She will not remember blood that soaked her hands, making her grip on her Beretta slick and slippery.

There are many, many things will will not remember, but she will never forget the way the single gunshot ends everything. This gunshot is not from her gun, and it does not kill someone she loves, but this gunshot, with its harsh finish, sharp yelp, lays to rest her demons and nightmares and monsters-in-the-dark.

This gunshot changes everything, and starts everything anew.

It comes from a Glock, a handy little black weapon, wielded by a man far more dangerous than the one dead on the floor. This man is familiar to her, someone she really thinks she ought to know, because how could she forget a face like that? He haunts her dreams, she is sure.

This man is more dangerous, because she thinks he may hold the stuttering, fluttering pulse of her heart in his killer-saviour hands, and because he so fragile-broken, so mended-whole.

She doesn't make sense, not really, not now. Does it matter?

Maybe it does. _[BEGIN END SEQUENCE.]_

This man is important. The Doctor, she reminds herself. There was a time - once upon a time, really, in a far away land, she was sure she knew more about him. Pity. What a pity. She thinks they would have been good together. In another life, maybe.

_[DELETION ALGORITHM INITIATED.]_

Well. It hardly matters now, does it? _Whir, whir, whir_, goes the little sound at the back of her mind. This is the end, she supposes. It won't be so bad. She can see desperation in his eyes, something like fear and frustration and loss and pain, each flickering on his face in a parade of expressions and emotion.

Wait.

Who is she? There is an unfinished story. There are pages and chapters and arcs left unwritten, all blank and wiped clean.

_My name_, she thinks, long and hard. She tries, _god_, she really tries. _My name is -_

He kisses her, and though she will not remember it, this is what saves her life.

X-X

_"He's dead," she asks. He nods, and she turns her head away from the prone body lying on the ground before them. "I'm sorry," she continues, and he shakes his head. "Don't be." She tries not to, but it is not something that she can help._

_"We should go," he tells her, and his voice is sturdy and firm. She grasps his words like a lifeline, and takes his hands as they leave._

Faintly, she recalls words from days ago, lifetimes ago. _Those who give the orders are not the ones who die._

_Really?_ She thinks. _Really?_

They begin again, and the story starts.


	24. Epilogue

**A/N**: A huge, huge thank you to everyone who's patiently waited for this chapter! It's incredibly minimalist and post-modernist in style, so feel free to draw your own conclusions. If you're heartbroken by what seems to be a sad ending, I helpfully direct you to Chapter 17, The Ghosts of Christmas Future, for some relief. :D

**Beta'd by the lovely glory_jean.**

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><p><em>Post-Ground Zero, at the End-or-Beginning<em>

"Where did he go?"

It is a question she has been asking, over and over again, these past few months. She asks variations of it too, questions like did I just miss him and how long ago did he leave?

The answers are always different.

It is a wholly different world for her now, one tainted by double-lives and people-she-knew-and-forgot-and-knows. It is, really, a brave new world. She just wishes he was there to face it with her. Quiet words and stilted conversations that had stuttered between them when she woke are not enough, any more than his slipping away in the dead of night had been.

There are many things she wants to ask him, but the main one is: _why?_

"Away," Mickey answers, and runs a tired hand down his face. "I don't know where he is."

She frowns at this, tired and heart-sore and - just tired. He leans towards her across the tiny table they share in a quiet cafe somewhere in Eastasia, and takes her hands in his. They are warm and grounding, reminding her that this is reality, that this is life.

"But really," he continues, "I think the question you should be asking is -" Mickey stops, and eyes her speculatively. "Will you go after him?"

Her answer is immediate. "Of course," she replies, and bristles that he thought he ever had to ask.

"Why?" The question is short and direct, and she flounders and grasps for an answer to give. _Why_. Three letters that form a weighty, considerable word.

"Because -" the words stick in her throat, like too-sticky honey and serrated knives. "Because I have to." She shakes her head at that, bites out a frustrated noise. The sentiments and emotions behind this, behind them are too complex to articulate. "Because I want to. I need to."

"So is this about the search or about him?"

It is a good question. It is also one that she doesn't have the answer to, no matter how much she wishes she could provide one. Three months have passed since a distant resurrection in a foreign land, since she was yanked back into a body that is no longer really hers. Three months is a long time in their short lives.

"It's about us," she breathes. "About everything, I suppose."

Mickey is puzzled, and she notes the way a vague line of confusion mars his brow.

"I have to go," she injects before he can speak. "There's somewhere that I need to be."

As she pushes away from the quaint, iron-wrought table, she tries to ignore the lingering question that hangs in the quiet wind.

_Where?_

X-X-X-X

"Sometimes," she says to no one in particular, "I feel so alone."

The ocean is crashing and churning in front of her, a seething body of beauty and destruction. There is no one around, not for yards and miles, and she faintly recalls a beach that wasn't real, in a mind that wasn't really hers.

_Bad Wolf,_ she remembers, and the taint of the two words needs more water than all the seas and water bodies the planet possess to wash away.

_Little Red,_ she thinks, and there is not enough time in the entirety of eternity to make the pain of the two words fade completely.

She likes Eastasia. It is hushed and mostly calm, and the language spoken here is one she does not understand, and so she does not need to speak. Instead, the wind and the sun and the stars and the earth and everything she never appreciated before calls to her, like guiding stars to a fallen Bethlehem.

"Sometimes," she repeats, "I feel like I'm dying."

_What about today?_ the wind screams back.

"Today?" she laughs. "Today, I'm already dead."

_What about yesterday_, the earth hums.

She bends down, and scoops up a handful of sand. It scatters in the breeze. "Yesterday," she murmurs, "I wasn't alive."

_Are the two things so different?_ The world is at once in motion and at rest around her, like the deadly quiet-stillness in the eye of a storm, in the centre of a whirlpool.

"They are," she sighs. "When you go to sleep and wake up a different person, they are."

_What about tomorrow, then?_

She flings a pebble into the greedy ocean. "Tomorrow, well, that depends on who I want to be." Straightening her shoulders, she pulls her windswept hair from her face and begins to walk away.

"But Death," she calls over her shoulder, to no-one and the world. "Death and Time are the best of friends."

There is no one around for miles to ask her what she means.

X-X-X-X

Today, she is in Eurasia, in a city called Leningrad. The whispers of revolutions no one remembers caress her too-pale cheeks, like ghostly fingers from a watery, murky past.

She doesn't know why she is here. There has been no trace of him, not for several weeks. She is a Watcher, and he is an Operative, and Operatives will always be one step ahead. Watchers, after all, see but do not act. They wait for the action to unfold, cosseted and safe in their knowledge.

If he does not want to be found, she will not be able to find him, no matter how hard she tries, regardless of how many seas she crosses. But she can -

She can follow his path, lovingly trace the steps of his journey that she gathers like scraps; muttered locations from voices overhead in low-hanging alleys, in back streets and dingy pubs, in secret dens.

And maybe, just maybe, when he finally stops running, she will be able to catch up with him. When she does so, she can ask him _why_.

It is something she has often thought about, on her own Odysseus trail. In the vicious dark of night, her heart will clench as her mind insidiously stabs; _he left you because you became a liability, he's sick of you now_. On her better days, when the sun is out and the radiation levels are lower, her heart will sing; _he left you because he only brought you pain, he thought it was better for you this way._

She doesn't know which answer she prefers. The first is painful and crushing combined with the weight of her insecurities and worries, the second is almost worse.

But then again, she did kill herself for love, so she supposes she forfeited the right to judge a long time ago, when her heart stopped beating _(thrice)_.

The streets of the city are muted but bustling, historical in a striking tableau of chronological suspension. There is old and new, and the dichotomy appeases the fissure in herself that she is still attempting to mend.

Occasionally, she wonders if her search is futile, if they have reached the end of the road, is if she is the ostrich-in-the-sand. She dismisses these musings easily.

The not-knowing is a far greater fear of hers than the need to move forward. She thinks it has always been one of her key follies.

And even after that, she cannot help but wonder if, in the end, it is the journey that is more important than the final destination.

She needs this, maybe. Time to herself, to discover who she is now, combined with who she was before and even before that. Maybe this is a blessing in disguise, from a God she doesn't believe in, doesn't want to believe in.

She hears whispers of him sometimes, not just his locations._ The Rogue Operative_, they call him, in reverent tones or under breaths of haughty disdain. _Crazy fucker. Best one they ever had, and bam, he just went MIA, just like that. Weird shit, I tell ya_. It makes her want to laugh and cry.

She slides onto a dimly-lit side street, away from watchful eyes. Her breaths need to steady out, her pulse needs to calm down. The world is a different place for her now, and she cannot predict how she will react to things that should be familiar but aren't.

The wind rushes past, silent and swift. _What about today?_ it carefully words.

"Today," she answers. "Today, I'm alive."

**FIN.**


End file.
